Member-only story
You Can Reinvent Yourself at Any Age. (If You Can Afford It.)
On ageism, the motherhood penalty, and who actually gets to start over.
I met him one afternoon when I knocked on his door to ask about the apartment. He was moving out, and I was thinking of moving in, so he let me look around. I walked up the stairs to his rooms already imagining my own things in them.
He was easy to talk to. I asked what he did and where he was headed, and bit by bit it came out. He was a university professor from New Zealand, a year or so younger than me, and he’d come here to teach.
So had I.
I told him a little of my own story. I’d spent most of my life abroad, and I was still finding my way through a culture whose customs weren’t quite mine, even though I was born here.
He knew the feeling from the opposite direction. He’d spent his whole life in New Zealand and landed in the same disorientation. We stood in his airy living room comparing notes on what it’s like to be a stranger in a place that’s supposed to make sense.
Somewhere in that conversation, we got onto age.
He had just landed a university position. I had spent a long stretch struggling to find work, and my age was always somewhere in the room. I don’t know…
