In Praise of Crazy Old Ladies (of any gender, description, identification, physical accoutrements, o
- Ann Cognito
- Oct 25, 2021
- 7 min read
I love crazy old ladies, and I always wanted to be one. I do have questions about being a crazy old lady… but not the usual sort (of questions, or crazy old lady).
I’m pretty sure I’m the last person actually still living aboard around here. I’m the only sailboat around, and one of the smallest boats by far. My little sea vardo needs so much cleaning and repairs, and that’s very much more evident docked beside expensive, immaculate, power cruisers. I hang laundry on the rigging in the rain to rinse again, then dry in the morning sun, and I’m determined to do this huge crazy project in spite of more challenges than you can shake a boathook at. I’m pretty sure at least a few folks think I’m a crazy old lady, even if nicely, which is probably the case.
My first goal in life was to be a crazy old lady. When I was very little and they asked me what I intended to be when I grew up, that was my response, up until maybe about the time I started nursery school.
Every time I met a grownup woman (or any person, really, but ambitions were rather gendered then, at least in my family) whom I thought was so fascinating that I wanted to be like them… I was told that was just ludicrous, because that person was crazy.
A friend in the neighbourhood had a mother who was one of the Raging Grannies. Until amusingly recently, I had no idea that was so much more than a small local group, and if you don’t know of them, look them up! They’re all over the place! I had no idea! I was so happy to discover Raging Grannies in Ottawa, and so happy the local group supported our Climate Emergency Camp there. The Raging Grannies are the cats’ pajamas – they are all older women, though I’m not sure that actually technically having grandchildren is a prerequisite, and I’ve met at least one Raging Grampy. They dress up for activist events, playing up the ‘granny’ idea as much as possible, with mismatched multi-patterned dresses and shawls, and the whole nine yards. They sing… they support human rights issues, and the planet… they strike a chord by standing out. They make a point of visually being those who care so much they have nothing left to lose. They care more about the issues they fight for than they do about your opinion of their age, their dress, their activities. They care more about people and planet than about the respect of strangers muzzled by addiction to the status quo. They’re there for the future, for their children and grandchildren, for the next generations. They have perspective, they understand things, they care. They are wise. They were my first real live heroes.
I was told they were a bunch of crazy old ladies.
My mother’s chronically unhappy friend was one of the few in our family/friends circle then whom I looked up to. No matter what anyone tried to force her to feel, she knew herself and she knew very large things in her life were completely wrong; she refused to stuff her feelings in a box and make them invisible to fit in and be accepted. They made fun or her almost as much as they did me, and when I said she made sense to me, they said that was too bad because she was crazy.
I met her much much later, when I was older than she’d been when I first knew her. She was still deeply unhappy, but had started finding her own way… partly because being herself had cost her the friendships of those who’d always tried to force her to be someone else. She was not happy yet… but she was less permanently far from that, and more comfortable in her own skin. She was still trying and still going her own way in spite of a life that very much discouraged that. I still respect her.
My first, best, and dearest art teacher was a tree. She looked and lived like a human, but she was so utterly and soundly rooted in the knowledge that she was indeed a tree that it was impossible not to accept that as a simple fact. I was in junior high school, already adrift in many ways, and Edith’s roots were beautiful. I loved her, and I respected her, as an artist and as a hu– as a tree, who’d for some reason, turned up in my life in human form.
Eventually, my art lessons were curtailed. My parents were so concerned about the influence of such a crazy old lady that even the offer of free scholarship study at her small private school wouldn’t dissuade them.
Learning boats was required in my family curriculum. Learning about the existence of real, historical female pirates was not an acceptable branch of that study. Reading about those crazy old ladies would surely teach me to be even more unmanageable than I already was.
Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series of books was first prescribed, because of the scientific content, but later removed from my shelves because I thought Mrs who, Mrs Which, and Mrs Whatsit were the most remarkable and brilliant beings possible… and of course, they were crazy old ladies – and imaginary, to boot!
I know trees and gypsyhermits, earth protectors, hippies, wisewomen and wildwomen and crones… nurturing mothers and grandmothers, and those who live in colours so unique and brilliant they can’t be passed on genetically… teachers and mentors and poets and artists and women who change the world.
The women I have admired and respected most throughout my life, and from whom I’ve learned the most, are cut from similar cloth, as they are to this day and probably always will be. I think many would laughingly agree we’re all crazy old ladies in some ways – in good ways.
The crazy part, well, I’m sane enough in the usual psychological sense, and I happily accept my eccentricity. But I never expected the old part to happen. I just didn’t. It didn’t seem to be one of the possible endings in the choose-your-own-adventure book of my life, or if it was buried on a back page and maybe stuck to another and hidden, I couldn’t see how to find it. From the stacks and shelves of of scientific readings in our house, and from what I could see of the world from my admittedly very small perspective, there didn’t seem to be one for the planet, either (but I was told that a crazy interpretation of things).
So, when I turned fifty, I was over the moon. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a good round number to call the beginning of being old.
One of my friends wasn’t so happy, because she’s only a year younger and has no intention of ever calling herself old. She insisted sixty was the unavoidable norm, and though she’d be staying fifty nine forever once she got to it, I couldn’t be old before that. So we made a deal. I get to be old at fifty – she has until she’s seventy; she gets my extra years.
Also, I’m pretty broken a few ways, so much so in some ways that I can’t work or live ‘normally’ any more, so I am officially retired for disability reasons. I cannot and will not sit on my butt being comfy (and I wouldn’t be anyways, because of the same reasons I can’t work), so I will get my crazy together and go make it useful to the world.
But why is being ones’ self considered crazy? Why is actively caring about or identifying with the planet considered crazy? Why have we gotten such a narrow perspective on how to be human or how to live? That’s not integral to humanity, not by a long shot.
We’re social beings, naturally inclined to community living and interpersonal support. We thrive on uniqueness, and on the kind of community created by a variety of contributions. And we thrive when we live in ways that help the ecosystem thrive. How did that become crazy?
And where did this negative connotation about age come from? We used to respect experience and wisdom. This culture not only doesn’t respect that, it also somehow prevents it, sometimes, and in some ways, and in a broad sweeping general way.
And why… especially now, when there may well be no more pages left in our collective choose-your-own-adventure book… is supporting and subscribing to systems and industries making our own immediate, individual, unnaturally long lives seem cushier more important than trying to make sure any current or future human beings get to be crazy old ladies… or even just get to be old?
So I will keep loving all the crazy old ladies (of any gender, description, identification, physical accouterments, or what-have-you) and everyone else who loves them, and I will keep trying to be one when I grow up.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make another cup of oogie boogie tea and shuffle bins around in a sailboat so I can make newspaper templates of her cabin sole so I can replace it with salvaged teak boat doors, and make more templates, of her cushions, so I can re-cover them this winter (while I live in a tent in a friends rural yard), because the cold rainy late October river weather makes this a crazy day for a kickbike picnic.
With hope and determination,
Ann
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The project budget is a different kind of crazy, and help in any way, shape, or form is much appreciated… if you can help in the financial form, here’s how…
Sporadic and one-time support through Chuffed, at
Ongoing support via Patreon (I’m still having trouble posting there, my apologies), at
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Photos from the past few days aboard… some of laundry and weather mostly from today, some of a puppyfish avoiding weather, some of the crazy aboard here amidst the bins and the to-do’s and the weather… also the now-functional bilge pump, salvaged wood and dodger frame, the near-dry locks looking a little crazy now that they’re shut down for winter, some crazy mushrooms, and the view from atop a crazy old boat…
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