A Woman of a Certain Age

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“Старость не радость,” which translates to “Being old is not a joy,” is one of the first colloquial, everyday Russian sayings that stuck with me when I first began spending significant periods of time in Russia. Often uttered with a sigh of resignation, the simple phrase probably stayed with me because I heard it so often, primarily from middle-aged and aging Russian women. Women like the host mothers I lived with in the provincial city of Vladimir in my early to mid-20s, when I taught English for a year at an institution called the American Home and returned for a summer of intensive Russian study after my first year of grad school at Stanford. I always felt empathy for the people who uttered this phrase in conversation, but as a younger adult I lacked the experience to fully understand where they were coming from. 

Now that, as of last month, I’m 45, “старость не радость” resonates differently in all its brutal Slavic bluntness: no frills, no sugarcoating, no optimism. Aging does not bring happiness. That’s the way it is.

But does it really have to be all bad? 

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