Generation gaps

I put down my shovel and got to thinking. I am getting close to 60 so sort of thought that I was getting elderly. But if Aunt Lieve is going to the elderly, what is she at age 77? I would have thought “elderly”, but, nope, she is a “retired person”. So off she goes down the street with eggs and bread.

Nonkel André was a baker. Here in Belgium, his generation of bakers was the very hard-working type. We called them “warm bakers”. They started their careers when they were 16 and usually got married early to a good, equally hard-working girl. André found his in the countryside. Lieve was the daughter of a farmer in Knesselare, with seven brothers and sisters.

André got up in the mornings around 2.00, drug the heavy bags of flour to the workshop and started to make dough. By the time most people in Ghent woke up, he had worked four or five hours, and the city was filled with the smell of fresh-baked bread. After cleaning the kitchen and ovens, he would jump on his bike and ride the 26 kilometres to Knesselare to see Lieve.

The two married and, in 1957, started their own little bakery. Lieve worked the counter, and André baked. He began to specialise in cakes and pastries, then in the difficult art of making Belgian pralines. In those days, they were still made by hand.

Their success brought them to a bigger shop with a coffee room in Knokke. The pralines were famous, as were some of his cakes, and often you would get to the shop in the early afternoon to find that all of it was sold out.

After a long career, they sold their last shop and “retired”. Hah! André began giving lessons at the famous Hotel School Ter Groene Poort in Bruges. Many in his baking class gave up when they saw how hard it was and the hours you had to put in. André also taught the old method of praline making, until the faster, industrialised methods took over. The cost of making pralines was just too high when done by hand.

Not only that has changed, but there are more and more bakers who do not bake anymore and just have bread delivered to their shops. We call them the “cold bakers”. Those who do bake get their mixtures delivered, ready-mixed, by the big mills. Just add water and bake. No reason to get up at 2.00. Problem is, it tastes just like the bread in the next shop and in the next neighbourhood and in the next village. No more improvisation, no more individuality. André goes nuts when he hears about that.

André suffered a heart attack a few years ago and is supposed to be taking it easy. Well, he still gets up at 5.00 when he has decided to do some baking. There is a chalet-style garden house in the back yard that is his bakery. He has a professional oven or two and big wooden counter on which to knead his bread and shape his fabulous cakes and tarts. He made me one of my favourites for my birthday: the Javanais – a heavenly layer cake with dark chocolate glazing and mocha-flavoured butter-cream.

And André still makes his own bread – for family and friends (who number about 50). The first thing you hear when you poke your head onto their veranda is: “Want some coffee?” It is as if Aunt Lieve is still in their bakery and coffee shop. She will putter around the kitchen and come up with a piece of pie or cake. Then you must sit down and have a chat.

There are usually others sitting at the little coffee table in a small, cosy room warmed by the wood stove, cluttered with photos and souvenirs. It is just the place to be.

And then they tell their stories about the times when they had their bakery or the shameful way that bakers now make bread. The people they met, the things they saw, the lessons they learned. And then you think, well, these must be the “elderly”. But they do not consider themselves to be old yet and talk about the elderly down the street, who are probably not more than five years older.

My own mother is the same. At 93, mostly blind, three-quarters deaf, survivor of 17 operations and an official status of “highly handicapped”, she admits that she is “getting on”. Her eldest sister, Claire, died at the age of 101. Mom says that “Claire was old”.

She just told me on the phone that she is having an absolute blast with her new wheelchair. Her husband, Hans, takes her on long walks whenever the sun comes out. She’s having a good time talking to neighbours she never met. She thinks that this is so much fun that they have decided to take a week’s vacation in the German Westerwald and go on long walks.

I think we need new definitions for the words “old” and “elderly”. Or we need some new words for the in-between stages. I guess that the English language didn’t need any other words for getting old back in the days when you died at 60. But now the average life expectancy is 75. So we still have a good amount of Easters, springs and summers to experience.

So I wonder now, when we, my generation, can finally consider ourselves “elderly”. When will we be old? I suppose some will be old at 100 and some are already old at 50.

Will we have the courage of the “elderly” that I see every day? I do hope so. Maybe we will learn to ignore the aches and pains and be grateful that there are still others who need us. We should remember that there are people who we consider old who are baking and doing nice things for the “elderly”, while we lay in our beds groaning about sore muscles and stiff joints.

Maybe we still have a lot to learn about what it means to become old and about the joy it brings to make others happy, no matter what your age.