Term Limits

My elder friend, Margaret, once told me that one’s 70’s were ‘a piece of cake,’ but the 80’s … well, she just rolled her lively eyes and chuckled. She was about to turn 90 and would become widowed soon after this conversation. She had stopped attending Sunday services regularly, though she scolded me, right in the middle of the produce section, for leaving the congregation. I hope she lives a long time.

This month I turned 79 and it wasn’t until I took the training for being a poll watcher that I began to seriously question whether some tasks are beyond my ability to perform with aplomb and confidence. I’ve kind of taken for granted the good longevity genes I inherited from the women in my line: Mom died at 94; her sister, Josie made it to 96; and Granny Daw Thant was well into her 80’s. All were physically active and mentally with it. Mom was swinging a golf club until her knees gave out, and remained a canny bridge, poker and Rummy 500 player until near the end. Aunt Josie, who spent her adult years in the UK, never cared to get a driver’s license. She could run down a bus carrying shopping bags, and worked in her vegetable patch past her 90th birthday. Granny? Legendary for her Thai-style massages, she could hop up on your back to knead the muscles with her feet, never losing her balance — or wicked laugh — until she died, instantly as she always wanted, of a heart attack.

They set a high bar. At 56, I trained as a yoga instructor and launched classes in my stripped-down living room in Hoboken, N.J. I called it 11th and Yoga and filled the space with students three nights a week. My body-mind was my business card. In yoga, I felt as though I’d discovered, if not the fountain of youth, then flexibility and resilience for my later years. I retired from teaching after 20 years, but maintain a regular practice with an app that let’s me choose the kind of class, the music, and the teacher I want to deliver instructions into my ear: Australian Chad, these days. One of my daughters-in-law is devoted to workouts with stretch bands and got me interested in this as well. I put all of this to the test recently, by moving my writing desk up one flight of stairs while my spouse offered sight lines so I didn’t take out the bannisters or scrape the wall.

Post-carding and texting were perfect get out the vote activities during lockdown. But as this particular election looms, I find myself drawn to poll watching because it’s clear we are up against some formidable attempts to interfere with the peaceful process. I have always admired those who serve every election year in various capacities. At my polling place in 2016, I witnessed one very polite worker remind an apparently confused Dr. Ben Carson that having cast his ballot, he needed to vacate the premises immediately. She gently but firmly escorted him out. Doesn’t that sound civil and orderly, the way a democracy is supposed to work?

But I must admit that the hour-long Zoom training to be a poll watcher has given me pause as to whether 1. I can be in the room from 5:30 a.m. to poll closing or even manage a 7+ hour shift during the early voting period which began in my state today, or 2. be mentally sharp enough to challenge my counterpart in the other party if I need to, and text reports of what I observe to the ‘boiler room’ of the Lawyers Bound for Justice. Not to mention that I use hearing aids. As they say, I’m on the fence about this. But it does make me think about the wisdom of knowing when you have reached your personal limits, legends like RBG notwithstanding.

This is going to sound odd coming from the co-author of Too Young to Retire: 101 Ways to Start the Rest of Your Life, an argument for staying in the game long after so-called retirement age. But term limits for all forms of government service are beginning to make sense to me, if only to forestall Murphy’s Law*. Congress is currently full of people who have forgotten why they ran for office in the first place. You don’t need a better argument for term limits than the spectacle of a 48-year-old SCOTUS nominee whose views don’t represent the majority of Americans, possibly gaining a lifetime appointment.

*“If something can go wrong, it will and usually at the worst time.”