LEAP! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?
By Sara Davidson
Random House
336 pp $25.95

Baby Boomers, those 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, are discovering the inevitable ups and downs of aging. Yes, the Boomers -- the generation that made love, not war, and which, by its sheer size, arguably packs more cultural weight than any generation before or after it -- are now turning 50 at the rate of one every seven seconds.

As usual, they're putting their own spin on aging, refusing to age the way their parents did -- a phenomenon explored by journalist and screenwriter Sara Davidson in her book LEAP! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?

Davidson's latest book is well timed, as millions of us Boomers are starting to push 60. Back in 1977, her bestseller Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties chronicled Boomers' coming of age. Picking up the trail nearly three decades later, Davidson declares there's a new stage of life consisting of the years after 50 and before 80, and it's the Boomers' mission to figure out what to do with it. As a generation, Boomers may look and feel younger than any previous generation. But even if they're not planning to play a lot of golf or enter a nursing home, they're not in Kansas anymore.

Reinventing yourself in your 50s and 60s can be a scary process. Davidson calls it "the narrows," when everything that is known, including one's identity, gets stripped away. True enough. When we were young, we clamored for change. Now it terrifies us.

I'm the advance guard of this wave. In September, I'll turn 60, and nothing about aging -- the sagging jowls, graying mop, or fading memory -- is easy to accept. But if nothing more, reading Davidson's book lets you know you have plenty of company.

"Everyone must go through the narrows -- the transition to a different phase of life -- if you don't do this voluntarily, the world or your body will force you to," she writes. "The people whose stories I've told… all experienced stripping [of their identity] and had a conversion, whether it was deciding to walk down the ladder gracefully, fearless in tackling debts or in [Tom Hayden's] case, putting his career drives down. After listening to them, I saw that nobody seems to escape, no one has a dispensation."

Davidson interviews more than 150 people for the book, and the Boomers she chooses seem unusually well equipped for the challenges of aging and post-retirement living. Some are famous: the guru of alternative medicine Dr. Andrew Weil, and feminist Gloria Steinem*, to name a few. Many have chucked their high-powered careers (sometimes with a helpful corporate push out the door) to assume new lives. A former manufacturer of valves for oil companies founded a nonprofit that develops parks in Gypsy enclaves in Belgrade. A former writer now runs a live theater. Others are having or adopting babies, becoming country singers, or doing standup comedy.

Not all make drastic changes, though. Many want to continue working -- or have to, for financial reasons, though few would starve if they retired. Indeed, there's a pronounced dearth in her book of low-income Boomers, especially those living hand-to-mouth. (That's a big drawback, because one recent study shows that three in 10 Boomers have less than $25,000 in savings.)

It's a predictable problem, as Davidson seems to have stayed within her comfort zone when choosing whom to interview. Though she now lives in Boulder, Colorado, and has written for high-profile magazines, Davidson spent much of her career writing and producing in Hollywood. She became co-executive producer of the 1990s hit television series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" and was nominated for a Golden Globe. Even Davidson's own approach to the "narrows" -- her descent to a Tinseltown has-been -- reads like a script. At her pinnacle, a William Morris agent answers her phone calls with, "Hi, talented!" By the end she's told, "You don't have edge."

I know about transition. After a career of nearly 30 years as a news reporter, I took a company buyout 18 months ago. Just like that, I found myself in a world with no deadlines, no story conferences, no editors, and no paycheck.

There's something deeply delicious about waking up in the morning and realizing no one has control over your life anymore. In Davidson's book, a researcher who studied the lives of 4,000 retired men and women, calls it "a grand hall pass." I like that because it's so true.

Grabbing my own pass, I moved back to Honolulu to live in the old family house. Under nearly constant sunny skies, I have leisurely rediscovered my hometown after an absence of almost three decades, and it's been wonderful.

With that freedom comes uncertainty and sometimes downright terror if you're not financially fixed for life (and most of us aren't). My college-age daughter still needs financial help, and there are daily expenses I'm trying to keep down. Yet I'm lucky to have what many Americans can no longer expect: a pension. I'm not at the point of writing the great Hawaiian novel, but something will catch my eye sooner or later. Like Davidson, I'm searching for the next thing.

Leap! would have made this search easier if it weren't so enamored of rich people and so heavy on anecdotes. To enjoy it, you need to have an abiding interest in Hollywood glitz and celebrity -- singer Carly Simon, actress Jane Fonda, politician Tom Hayden, model Cheryl Tiegs, and spiritual leader Ram Dass all tell their stories of transition in its pages. Yet by their nature, the choices that these extraordinary people make can't really serve as an example to the other 78 million of us with regular jobs and problems.

For me, the book's most fascinating question is not how, but where we choose to grow old. It's a topic Davidson and her friends, including Dr. Weil, toss around every time they get together: the idea of building or finding a place where they can live independently but grow old together. Like-minded people must be thinking about this, too, and the possibilities are endless. In the book Legendary, satirist Paul Krassner muses that he'd opt for a home for humorists "where there are a lot of good drugs and lots of laughs."

I already live with my sister, who'll be 66 soon. And when my other sister and her husband retire to Hawaii in a few years, we'll all want to live together so we can take care of each other when that time comes. I can see us now, shouting to each other because we can't hear anymore. But at least it'll be home.

-- Annie Nakao was a Knight fellow and a former reporter and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She currently lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.

*At 70, Gloria Steinem is technically too old to be a Baby Boomer, but who's counting?

References

First published August 20, 2007
Last updated October 14, 2008
Copyright © 2007 Consumer Health Interactive