不是老人變壞了 而是壞人變老了

ABOUT 18 months ago, my 97-year-old grandmother went out to dinner with some friends. As Nanna got out of the car, she tripped over her friend Shirley’s cane, fell to the pavement and came down hard on her elbow. Back at home, she headed to the kitchen to get some dessert — “and my left leg just crumpled.”

大約一年半前，97歲的外婆和幾個朋友外出用餐。外婆下車時，絆到朋友雪莉(Shirley)的手杖，摔到人行道上，肘部重重地摔了一下。她回到家，去廚房拿甜點時發現“左腿有點不對勁”。

At the hospital, the doctors ordered X-rays, but couldn’t see anything wrong. After two weeks of therapy, Nanna was sent home, but she’d made up her mind. After 30 years of living in Florida, 28 of them as a widow, and most of those spent insisting that the only way she’d go back to her native Michigan was “in a box,” Nanna asked her older daughter, my Aunt Marlene, to find her a sunny place near Detroit.

醫生給她拍了X光片，但沒看出什麼問題。治療兩週後，外婆出院了，這時她已做了一個決定。她在佛羅里達住了30年，其中28年是寡居，大部分時候她堅稱，她只有“在骨灰盒裏”纔會回到故鄉密歇根，但是現在她讓大女兒、我的姨媽馬琳(Marlene)給她在底特律附近找一個陽光燦爛的地方。

Last summer, she moved into an independent living facility with access to a range of services and activities. She has her own apartment, with a kitchen, but can eat her meals in a dining hall. After giving her a few days to unpack and settle in, I got her on the phone. How was it going?

去年夏天，她搬進了一個獨立生活機構，這裏提供一系列服務和各種活動。她有自己的公寓，裏面有個廚房，不過她也可以在食堂用餐。在她安頓好幾天後，我給她打了個電話，問她過得怎麼樣。

“Well,” Nanna began. Her apartment was lovely. The food was just fine, and there were all kinds of classes and courses to while away the hours. “Have you made any friends?” I asked, in the same chipper tone I used when my younger child returned from her first day at kindergarten.

“呃，”外婆說。她的公寓很可愛。食物還可以，還有各種講座和課程，可以消磨時光。“你有沒有交到什麼朋友？”我用活潑的語氣問道，就像我的小孩第一天從幼兒園回來時我問的那樣。

There was a pause. Then: “They won’t let me sit at their table!” Nanna cried.

外婆停頓了一下，然後大聲說道：“他們不讓我跟他們坐在一起！”

“Wait, what? Who won’t let you sit at their table?”

“等等，你說什麼？誰不讓你坐？”

“You try to sit and they say, ‘That seat is taken!’ ”

“我想坐下，他們卻說，‘這個座位有人了！’”

“Oh, my God,” I said, instantly thrust into a painful flashback of junior high, when I walked into the cafeteria and was greeted with the sight of leather purses looped across the chair backs and the sound of one girl with dramatically plucked eyebrows announcing, “Those seats are taken!” I hadn’t known enough to carry a purse. I had a lunchbox. (And it would take me another decade to figure out the eyebrow thing.)

“哦，天哪，”我說。我一下子想起了初中時的痛苦經歷。我走進食堂，看到椅背上都掛着小皮包，一個眉毛修得很誇張的女孩大聲宣告：“這些座位有人了！”我當時還不知道要帶個小包。我只帶了飯盒（又過了十年我才學會修眉毛這檔子事）。

“And just try to get into a bridge game,” Nanna continued. “They’ll talk about bridge, and you’ll say, ‘Oh, I play,’ and they’ll tell you, ‘Sorry, we’re not looking for anyone.’ ”

“我就是想打打橋牌，”外婆繼續說道，“她們在聊橋牌，我說，‘哦，我會打’，然後她們說，‘對不起，我們不是在找人打牌。’”

“Mean girls!” I said. “There are mean girls in your home!”

“真刻薄！”我說，“這些女孩在你家裏還這麼刻薄！”

“It’s not a home,” Nanna said sharply.

“這不是我家，”外婆馬上反駁道。

I considered. “Here’s my advice,” I said. “Find a bridge foursome. Figure out which one of them looks weak. Then hover.”

我想了想，接着說，“我的建議是，找一個橋牌四人組。看看其中哪個人最弱。然後在她周圍轉悠。”

When I was young and innocent — say, last summer — the idea of 90-year-olds in pecking orders, picking on those at the bottom, was a joke. Everyone knew that the real danger to the elderly came from unscrupulous relatives, con artists or abusive caregivers. We’ve all heard sad tales of senior citizens being beaten, starved or neglected by the people paid — usually underpaid — to care for them.

我年幼無知時——比如去年夏天——認爲90多歲的老人要排資論輩，欺負排在等級最底層的人這種事是開玩笑的。誰都知道老年人真正的威脅來自沒良心的親屬、騙子或虐待人的看護員。我們都聽說過付費看護人（通常報酬過低）毆打老人、不好好照顧老人或使老人捱餓的悲傷故事。

The notion that a threat to seniors is their peers is somewhat new, and usually played for laughs. It goes against a truism handed down from mothers to daughters for generations: This, too, shall pass. Mean girls are not girls, or mean, forever. High school doesn’t last forever, everyone grows up. But Nanna’s experience suggests otherwise. It says that the cruel, like the poor, are always with us, that mean girls stay mean — they just start wearing support hose and dentures.

同輩會對老年人造成威脅這種觀念還比較新，通常是笑談。它與母女代代相傳的老生常談相悖。我們一直以爲：一切都會過去的。刻薄的女孩會長大，不會永遠刻薄。高中會結束，每個人都會長大。但外婆的經歷表明，現實不是這樣的。她的經歷告訴我們，就像永遠有窮人一樣，我們身邊也總會有殘酷的人，刻薄的女孩老了也還是刻薄——只不過她們開始穿護腿長襪、戴假牙。

A recent Cornell University study by Karl Pillemer proves the point, showing that aggression among residents in nursing homes is widespread and “extremely high rates of conflict and violence” are common. According to the study’s news release, one in five residents was involved in at least one “negative and aggressive encounter” with another resident during a four-week period. Sixteen percent were cursed or yelled at; 6 percent were hit, kicked or bitten; 1 percent were victims of “sexual incidents, such as exposing one’s genitals, touching other residents, or attempting to gain sexual favors;” and 10.5 percent dealt with other residents’ entering their rooms uninvited, or rummaging through their belongings.

康奈爾大學最近的一項研究證明了這個觀點。進行這項研究的是卡爾·皮勒默(Karl Pillemer)，他發現養老院居民之間的侵犯以及“高頻率衝突和暴力”十分普遍。他在該研究的發佈會上說，在四周時間裏，五分之一的居民與其他居民至少發生過一次“負面和攻擊性交往”。16%的人被咒罵或怒斥；6%的人被打、踢或咬；1%的人遭到“性騷擾”，“比如暴露生殖器，撫摸其他居民，或者企圖獲得性福利”；10.5%的居民碰到過其他居民不請自來或者亂翻東西的情況。

Whether you’re brawling on the playground or battling over the best seats in chair-cercize, bad behavior is constant, and the rituals for trying to get in with the in-crowd don’t change much. Nanna’s quest for “the Cadillac of walkers,” a $400 number not covered by Medicare, mirrored my search a decade ago for the nearly thousand-dollar Bugaboo that would signal to my urban-mommy cohort that I belonged.

不管是在操場上爭吵，還是在坐式鍛鍊中爭奪最佳位置，都會經常出現惡劣行爲，努力進入小團體的過程沒有太大改變。外婆要買醫療保險不報銷的400美元的頂端步行器，跟我十年前花了將近1000美元購買Bugaboo嬰兒手推車一樣，只是爲了表明自己屬於都市母親這個羣體。

What transforms with age are the criteria for judgment: not looks, not wealth, not the once-coveted ability to drive at night. When you get to be Nanna’s age, you’re reduced to a number — the younger the better. Even in a residence for the elderly, the 80-somethings will still be cold to the 95-year-olds. Now 99, my Nanna is completely cognizant of what’s going on. Her memory, both short- and long-term, is excellent. But once her new neighbors heard her age, they knew they didn’t want her at their table.

隨着年齡改變的是評價標準：不是相貌、不是財富、不是曾經渴望的能在晚上開車的能力。到了外婆這個年紀，評價標準就只剩下年齡了——越年輕越好。甚至在養老院裏，80多歲的人也會對95歲的人冷淡。我外婆現在99歲，頭腦依然十分清晰。她的短期和長期記憶力都很好。但是新鄰居們一聽說她的年齡，就不想跟她坐在一起。

“My question is, are they rude? Are they nasty? Or is it that she’s not hearing, or is interpreting something that’s not really something? I can’t tell,” says Aunt Marlene. “I think there’s definitely cliques. I don’t know if there’s a way to alleviate the feeling of being left out. At 99, do you end up with a group? Does that happen? I don’t know. At first I thought, it just takes time. Now I wonder — maybe this is the way it is. Maybe you can’t expect anything else.”

“我的問題是，她們粗魯嗎？她們態度惡劣嗎？還是說她沒聽清或者誤會了？我無從判斷，”馬琳姨媽說，“我想那裏肯定有小集團。我不知道有沒有辦法緩解這種被排擠的感覺。在99歲時，你最終能否擁有自己的小團體？會有嗎？我不知道。一開始我想，過一段時間就好了。現在我想，也許情況就是這樣了。也許你不能再期望什麼。”

Bad behavior doesn’t change. Nor does the response from the ones on the sidelines, watching and hoping for the best. Even with lowered expectations, it’s hard. I fret about my first grader getting shut out of the four-square game or my sixth grader sitting alone at lunch. My mom and her sister wonder if their mother is suffering the same kind of isolation, exclusion and loneliness; the pain of having outlived every single one of your contemporaries, of having lots to say and no one to listen.

惡劣行爲不會改變。旁觀者的反應也不會改變——他們只會旁觀，希望情況變好。即使降低期望，也很難實現。我擔心我上一年級的孩子不能參加方塊遊戲，擔心我上六年級的孩子吃午餐時沒人跟他/她坐在一起。我媽媽和姨媽擔心她們的媽媽也在遭受同樣的隔離、排斥和孤獨，忍受活得比所有同輩人都長的痛苦，以及有很多話想說卻無人聆聽的痛苦。

Nanna tries. Every day, she takes a class: Yiddish, current events, even iPad 101. She gets dressed up for dinner, with a pretty scarf, a new sweater. She’s gotten to know her neighbors, table-mates, even the one who forgets her name between one dinner and the next, and she’s joined a mah-jongg game — “even though I haven’t played in years.” The ledge outside her front door is home to a little stuffed bear, dressed in University of Michigan regalia, a hopeful sentry, and maybe a conversation starter.

外婆在努力。她每天上一門課：意第緒語、時事，甚至iPad入門。她去用餐時精心打扮，戴上漂亮圍巾，穿上新毛衣。她慢慢認識了鄰居和桌友，甚至包括那個在兩頓飯之間就忘了她名字的人，她還加入了一個麻將小組——“儘管我好多年沒打過了”。她門外的壁架上放着一個小毛絨熊，它戴着密歇根大學的校徽，是個充滿希望的哨兵，也可能成爲一次談話的開端。

I try, too. Over Thanksgiving, we celebrated Nanna’s 99th birthday, with all 12 of her great-grandchildren on hand to tour the new apartment. Down in the lobby, my 6-year-old, Phoebe, and I met a beautifully dressed, immaculately made-up woman sitting on a bench with a cane, waiting for her niece to take her to Thanksgiving dinner at 5. It was 2. “Do you want to see my kitty?” she asked, and my daughter happily agreed. I learned that, like Nanna, the woman had moved in over the summer, was a Michigan native, and seemed sharp and aware. Feeling like a guy at a bar — another echo of another acceptance-and-rejection ritual — I asked for her number.

我也在努力。感恩節那天，我們慶祝外婆的99歲生日，有12個曾孫輩一起去參觀她的新公寓。我和六歲的女兒菲比(Phoebe)在大堂碰見一個穿戴漂亮、打扮得無可挑剔的女人，她拿着手杖坐在凳子上，等待甥女5點鐘帶她去赴感恩節晚宴。當時才兩點。“你想看看我的小貓嗎？”她問道。我女兒欣然答應。我後來得知，她和外婆一樣，也是密歇根本地人，也是夏天搬進來的。她看起來頭腦清醒。我要了她的電話號碼，感覺自己像酒吧裏的男人，開始了另一場接受和拒絕的過程。

Then Phoebe and I took the elevator back up to Nanna’s apartment, where the refrigerator door is covered with pictures of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I announced, “Nanna, I think I made you a friend.”

然後，我和菲比乘電梯回到外婆的公寓，她的冰箱門上貼滿了子女、孫輩和曾孫輩的照片，我大聲宣佈：“外婆，我覺得我給你找了一個朋友。”