Below are a few of the most important questions I asked each woman I interviewed. I’d love you to answer some of these and send them to me. I love discovering other women who are Perennials! After responding to Satchel Paige’s question, the discussions went into other areas of their lives.

• What kind of child were you? Were you hyperactive, or were you a calm child?
• Were there older women you looked up to?
• What accomplishments are you most proud of?
• What is your educational background?
• Why do you think you have remained active and engaged with life?
• Do you follow any specific health routines? For how long? Have those changed over the past few years?
• Was there a road not taken? Why did you discard some of those roads?
• What challenges you now? How do you overcome them?
• How is your life being fulfilled today?
• Have you experienced any ageism? How? What was your reaction or response?
• Why do you think you have remained active and engaged with life?
• What spiritual practices do you follow today? Is that important to you?
• Do you have words of wisdom for younger women still exploring?
• What specific challenges do you have now? How do you handle them?
• Primary focus of your life today? What is next for you?
• Do you have any words of wisdom for younger women still exploring?
• Do you mind if I ask how old you are?

I’ll write about these over the next several weeks to show you our general conversations and how those instigated new questions. Also, not all questions were answered at each interview.

If you would like to be included in my research, please write your responses and send them to me at lucyj@hawaii.edu with “Perennials” in the subject line. Whatever I post here will be completely private and never include anyone’s full name without permission. I might use initials to distinguish between various women, however. Your privacy is too important to jeopardize.

Have fun with these questions!

A hui hou!

Lucy

Photo: Sunset over the Pacific Ocean in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, taken by Lucy L. Jones.

Two weeks ago, I began a weekly series that will cover the work I did during my Sabbatical from my position as Associate Professor in Social Sciences at Hawai`i Community College.

Last week’s post promised that I would list the interview questions on my blog this week, but here were too many to list on one post. Also, other questions came up during eatch interview that were not on the original list. So I decided to take them individually.

Question #1 How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?

This was Satchel Paige’s response when asked his age, because he wasn’t sure just how old he was. You might enjoy reading his bio to find out more.

The very first question I asked each interviewee brought up interestiing responses. Every single answer to this question from my interviewees indicated that they view themselves as 10-20 years younger (or more) than their actual bioloical age.

How would you answer that question?

The women I interviewed seldom thought about their age. They simply kept going with whatever activities interested them, without worrying whether they were too old to do them.

When someone is having too much fun or finding so much satisfaction in what they are doing, age is rarely a consideration. Who has time to grow old?

Consider how you view your own age. If you think you are too old to do something, you might want to think again. Except for activities that are too difficult for your body to handle, there is hardly anything you cannot keep doing as your birthdays add up! 

On the other hand, I have found articles about surfers who are still going strong in their later decades. You can find examples of people in their later years doing astounding things – not just sitting at home in front of their TV!

It’s fun to be a PERENNIAL, instead!

If you are just now discovering my blog, welcome! I invite you to check out the categories on this site to view old posts that might interest you.

Some of you have been reading this blog since I started writing it in May 2009. I send you all kinds of loving gratitude! Keep spreading the word.

A hui hou, Lucy

**Photo: my great-grandmother Laura – a young, strong, Independent woman

The old saying that “life begins at forty” was said primarily by men, while women mostly feel invisible when they reach their forties. We’ve all heard that men look more distinguished when they get older, while women just look “old.”

For too many years, the woman was “candy” on the man’s arm. Women as leaders, scholars, influencers on their own didn’t get a good start until the seventies. There were a few rumblings by the time I graduated from high school in the early fifties, but it didn’t reach the numbers or notoriety until several decades later.

In my travels to interview women older than sixty, I used the word “perennial” to describe who we were. Every woman I talked to perked up when they thought of themselves as “perennials” rather than merely “old women.”

The name we give ourselves influences how we look and feel about ourselves. Raise your hand if you agree! (Looking around…) Yes! Every hand went up!

My next job was to write up my sabbatical project and get it approved by the Dean of the school and my Department Chair; both were women who loved the idea of being a Perennial.

I sent out letters of my intention to women I knew, who, in turn, recommended other women they knew. Before I left Hawaii, I had many women scheduled from West Coast to East Coast who wanted to be interviewed. My brother, a retired professor in Florida, recommended quite a few women who were also retired professors.

A graduate student helped me organize questions I would ask in interviews I planned to hold. In her excitement about the project, we ended up with way too many questions. Eventually, I decided to ask a few guiding questions and let the interviews develop more organically.

Next week, I plan to post the questions on my blog so you can see the main topics of our discussions. If you are interested in answering some of these questions for me to include in my future discussions, please feel free! I’d love to see how others answered these questions.

I reserved my flight to leave Hawaii, and a Trip-Tik for my road trip across the mainland began to take shape.

This was really going to happen!

Aloha, Lucy

We love to give names to each generation. My generation, those of us who were born 1925-1945, was the so-called “Traditionalists” or “Silent Generation.” That’s not a title to excite many people.

I propose we use a more positive label for this generation, those of us who have always been curious and active, and who have just kept blooming into our later years. I prefer to call us “perennials.” 

I’m not the originator of this designation. The title of “perennials” was first used by Gina Pell, when she used it to indicate a certain way of life. Although she did not specify any particular age group, her focus seemed to be on the middle-aged years. This gave people a new perspective for themselves rather than fearing a dreaded mid-life crisis.

When it came time for my Sabbatical, I was in my late eighties and into my third full-time career of teaching at the college level. I wondered how many women were also actively involved in their careers long after the “normal” retirement age. This became the focus of my Sabbatical study over the next six months.

With that purpose in mind, I spent my Sabbatical traveling throughout the mainland USA to interview active women over 65. I flew from my home in Hawai`i to Seattle to begin my search and conduct interviews with women who fit into my focus group.

Over the next few weeks, this blog will focus on the fascinating women I interviewed, like the 103-year-old who was busy planning her 104^th birthday party! These stories may serve as encouraging guideposts as you grow into your own later years.

UP WITH PERENNIALS!

Lucy

It’s time to celebrate the woman who gave birth to you! I send blessings to my mother, who gave birth to me over nine decades ago.

Even if you are not a mother, at some point in your life, a woman gave birth to you, and that woman became your mother.

Regardless of your current relationship with this person, you had to come from somewhere. Other than on a petri dish or in a test tube, as far as I know, only a live female can give birth to another human.

We haven’t been able to hand off that job to a man yet, although some have had to fill that role.

Perhaps you have a sibling who is a mother, a friend who is a mother, or maybe you want to be a mother.

Maybe you’re a “pet” mother, and how wonderful! Animals need a human mother, too. I’m a cat mom.

In the past few months, I have gained two new great-grandchildren, bringing my total to 13! That is a privilege few people have.

You might even be a new mother. If so, congratulations!  You’re in for a wild ride, so hang in there, Cupcake! The first eighteen years are the hardest!

My personal sentiments about Mother’s Day are better said by one of my favorite authors. Look for “Oy Vey! Mother’s Day!” by Anne Lamott. She is more descriptive (and honest?) about her feelings than I am.

No matter your situation or your feelings about Mother’s Day, stay positive and give yourself any reason to celebrate! After all, you’re alive today because of a mother somewhere!

A hui hou,

Lucy (The picture above shows my mother Jane, my father Alfred, and Lucy, not quite three.)

I’ve been leading a book study for a group in my church based on Earthbound by Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a seminary professor. In her book, Dr. Grace discusses our responsibilities and the connections between ecology and theology, between climate and justice.

We’ve just covered the first chapter of her book, which discusses water, our dependence on it, and the need to protect it if we are going to survive.

One of the men in our group offered a captivating video about how Los Angeles gets its water. I suggest you watch it to see how one desert city solved the lack of water. You will watch the growth of one of our largest cities.

This quick article is my plea for us to stop treating water as a “right” to consume or waste indiscriminately. We are facing a finite supply of our precious elixir. Please save it!

What can we do to preserve this priceless commodity so we don’t become like Dune?

A hui hou,

Lucy

Crawling into a dark, deep passage of raw earth was never something that I ever dreamed of doing! That exercise would never end up on my “can hardly wait to do” list! I’m not sure who had the bright idea to explore the area, or who thought it would be fun to crawl into that hole, just to see what was there. This wasn’t even a cave; it was just a big hole in the side of a small hill that was big enough for a body to slide through.

I wasn’t the first person in our group to go through that hole, but I was definitely determined not to be the last. I wanted someone behind me to give a shove when I got stuck, and I sure didn’t want to be the first one in. I ended up fourth in a group of six who crawled into the deep. At least I had a few behind me to help push if I got stuck.

I have no sense of how long we crawled. What if it just kept going? What if ultimately, we had to scoot our bums back out the way we came in? What if the hole got narrower? Fortunately, the tunnel stayed the same diameter as we continued on our way in, but where would it come out?

“WHOOP!” An exultant cry came from the head of the line. Now what in the world did that mean?

Suddenly, the rear-end I’d been following disappeared. I managed to scramble to a standing position in a huge underground room. Later, I learned that during World War II on the island nation of Guam, these large natural caves were often used by the Japanese for lookouts or shelters. They were all hidden and camouflaged, and we had found one.

Scattered around the dirt floor were several “Go” buttons, tiny round spectacles like the Japanese wore, 2-inch-long ampules of some sort of liquid, and other oddities. Through a created lookout, we could survey the entire area and remain hidden from sight. An abundant tropical foliage hid this command post from other eyes.

It was on this hike that we discovered other remnants of former life in this part of the island. The path led us down a steep hill, but there was a rope tied between trees to hang onto as we descended the slope. At a river, there was a line that stretched from one shore to the next, and a flat raft slid along that to get from one side to the other. We managed to bring the raft to our side, and we made it across the river. We also found traces of campfire, empty cans hidden under bushes, and various other signs of life.

Sheltered in the old “lookout,” we took time to eat our lunches, speculate on who had been here, and for how long. Finally, we bagged our scavenged treasures and headed back out the same hole. We were all relieved to get back out into fresh air.

In August 1969, my military family left Guam and moved to California. It was there that we read about Shoichi Yokoi, a lance corporal in the Japanese Army. He was the last Japanese straggler from World War II who finally came out of hiding on January 24, 1972. He was discovered near Talofofo Falls, an area I had hiked into earlier in the year.

It was probably Yokoi who had rigged the support line from tree to tree and set up the rafting system, left his dead campfires and empty cans, and hid from us as we trespassed on his hideaway. I’ve always wondered if he watched our group hike through his private territory, frightened that he would be discovered.

If you are interested in more about Yokoi’s story, check out the article in BBC News. Yokoi’s photo is from that story. BBC News (January 24, 2012)

A hui hou!

In January 2025, I published my memoir Risky about the five years I lived on my 37’ sailboat Lothlórien with my son, Erik. On February 28, 2025, Erik died unexpectedly of diabetic complications and heart problems after four days of hospitalization. He would have celebrated sixty-two years of life two weeks later.

I’m grateful that something inside my heart urged me to write memories of those five years he and I spent together on the boat, and the result was Risky. I had a copy sent to him, and in response he wrote, “I’m gonna fact-check ya, Mom!”

The photo above shows him scraping the bottom of Lothlórien in preparation for a new coat of paint for the hull. He was sixteen at the time with no thoughts of ever growing older or knowing that forty-six years later he would be gone. How quickly time goes by! Every moment is precious!

One of Erik’s projects in recent years was making mead in his shed. I drank one bottle of it (not all at one time, of course) and it was delicious! Evidently, he had a good, reliable source of honey for his project.

I have many wonderful memories of my youngest child, but the ones I remember most of all were aboard the Lothlórien. Losing a child is one of the hardest events a mother can face. We manage to go on with life, but we never forget, and I am grateful for the five special years of living on a boat together, with him as my co-captain.

The picture below was made on his sixtieth birthday. A bamboo tube of his ashes rests beside him.

Happy sailing, my son! I miss you! A hui hou!

Lucy

My last post was in September 2024, when I gave you a glimpse into my newest book, a memoir about the five years I spent living aboard my 37′ sailboat.

It was finally published last month and is now on the market. Please read it and leave a review.

A hui hou!

Lucy

When there is no wind at all to power your sails, you enter the doldrums, a state of inactivity, stagnation, depression, or “emotional period of apathy.”

All of us have experienced those times of life when the wind goes out of our sails completely. Nothing we do seems to get us going again, and sometimes we don’t even want to get going! And what do we do?

We get angry, we look for reasons why the wind isn’t blowing, we blame God for no wind, we blame someone else for the lack of wind, or we blame ourselves when we can’t get moving again.

I have used words. like turbulent or tempestuous to describe my life at times, and at almost ninety years of age, I find myself missing those days when I was blustery or wild, carefree, and restless. Most of my life has been about “making waves.”

Now I suspect I’m in the doldrums – too settled, too orderly, and too relaxed. My seas are too calm, and I haven’t quite figured out how to navigate these still waters. Others seemed to look forward to retirement, but I didn’t.

I love the gusty winds that keep you on edge, yet I also anticipate those relaxed moments when I can regenerate and prepare for the next storm to blow through. Like the doldrums, big storms don’t last forever.

(excerpt from upcoming memoir)

A hui hou,

Lucy