101 and still working. Yikes!

If my mother had lived, she'd be 101 years old. By the time she died at the age of 81, she'd been retired for 16 years from her job as a secretary in the Biology Department at Clark University. While she no longer work-worked at a job-job (i.e., a paid job), she kept putting in plenty of hours as a volunteer. She worked in the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store a few days a week, and as a long-standing member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society (a Catholic charitable organization), she worked at tasks like lugging a turkey and all the fixings up the treacherous backstairs of a Worcester three-decker to make sure a family in need had what they needed to put a Thanksgiving meal on the table.

Liz was working up until the end, so it can definitely be said that she died with her boots on - 20 years ago this past week, in fact. (And it wasn't just work that she stuck with. Among other things, she had three trips planned when she took the ultimate one-way journey: Chicago for a family wedding; Cape May, New Jersey, to look at Victorian houses; and a tour of Vienna and Prague.) 

But the boots my mother had on when she died were metaphorical ones. Certainly not the fisherman's boots that Virginia Oliver is pulling on a few days a week to go out lobstering with one of her sons. She's 101; her son Max is 78. 

101. 78. Another son, Bill, is still lobstering at 79, but he has his own boat. Talk about flinty Yankee Mainers. 

To Virginia, it's no big deal.

“I grew up with this,” said Virginia Oliver, a Rockland woman who began lobstering when she was 8, just before the Great Depression. “It’s not hard work for me. It might be for somebody else, but not me.” (Source: Boston Globe)

I can guarantee that it would be hard work for me.

Years ago, I went on a lobster boat tour out of Perkins Cove in Maine. We went out on a small lobster boat and the lobsterman pulled up a few traps, which the kids on board helped haul in. That excursion was enough to convince me that I wasn't cut out for the lobster life.

Not Virginia. She works with aplomb, and even throws on a little makeup and wears earrings - though not "the dangling ones", as they could catch - and that's not the type of catch Virginia wants to deal with. 

Virginia's father was a lobsterman, and she learned the ropes from him. She was thus well prepared when she married a lobsterman. Virginia took a bit of time off to raise her four kids, then worked with her husband for years. He died 15 years ago. When she first began lobstering with her husband, she was the lone woman among the bunch. 

Even though she's not hauling the traps, her work isn't easy.

Oliver’s job is to measure the lobsters, using pliers to place tight bands around the claws of the keepers, tossing the undersized overboard, and stuffing small pogies into bait bags.

Naturally right-handed, Oliver has worked the pliers with her left hand since she broke her right wrist several years ago. Despite the change, her hand movements seem remarkably supple and strong.

“You know, you do what you have to do,” she said. 

It's hard enough cutting those rubber bands off of a lobster's claws after the lobster is boiled and past its squirming prime. Clamping a live lobster that wants to live? Wow! 

Virginia hits the water three days a week, and is "the oldest licensed lobsterer in Maine and possibly on the planet."

Of course, the season is short: end of May to beginning of November. So she does have half a year to rest up. Still...

On the homefront, although Max helps a bit with the heavy lifting, Virginia still does all her own housework, shopping, and errands.

“I don’t walk around the wharves the way I used to, but I still drive — a GMC four-wheel-drive truck. As you can tell, I’m pretty independent.”

No shit, as they say. 

She also takes the wheel of the boat on occasion. 

Geno Holmes is a fellow Maine fisherman who was interviewed for the Globe article. 

“I’m 50 years old, and I want to retire,” Holmes said, shaking his head. “It’s incredible. To be able to get on a boat at her age, it’s crazy.”

Virginia, on the other hand, fully intends to die with her boots on.

I'm somewhere between Virginia and Geno in terms of retiring.

I gave up the full-bore corporate life shortly after I turned fifty. That's when I decided I'd had it with politicking, commuting, managing, and all the other aspects of my career that I wasn't exactly in love with. But I, of course, kept working. I put out my shingle as a marketing writer and managed to make a second career out of it.

And, at 71, I'm still working at it. Sort of. I work very part time, and, in the last few months have turned down a few projects that, just a year or so ago, I would have jumped at. If the interest level isn't there, I'm not going there, either. And fortunately I have the luxury of being able to just say no. 

Although if I'm fit and independent I'll be okay with it, and despite having had a grandmother who nearly made it to 97, I don't imagine I'll live to be 101. But if I do make it that far, I can't imagine I'll still be working. At least not doing marketing writing, primarily for tech companies. I have a friend who just turned 70, and is still doing work similar to mine. (Hers is more strategic and high-level, but we're both in the same ballpark, workwise.) We were talking recently, and she said that she believed that if some of her clients knew how old she was, they might not hire her. I've often felt the same way. Imagine if someone found out I was 101? Would they really want me writing about the tech latest? (Probably not worth worrying about: Thirty years from now, marketing writing will likely be extinct as a means of communication. What passes for writing will no doubt be some extreme version of the TikToks, Instas, and Twitters of the future. That and telepathy.)

As for Virginia, that woman is absolutely amazing. Next time I have a lobster roll, I'll be thinking of her, and wondering whether she's the one who put the band on "my" lobsters claw.