Many years ago, in a small coastal town in Italy, an old man taught me how to choose the best figs. Elegantly dressed in a pressed shirt and crisp trousers, he croaked through his artificial larynx, like a vocoder transmitting a language I could barely understand. Lovingly turning the various fruits in his wrinkled hands, he tapped them gingerly here and there and lifted the stems on their domes to illustrate his point. His need to pass this knowledge on to me on a lazy summer afternoon was so urgent and sincere that I still remember him vividly.

That simple, tender, yet utterly mundane moment made me think of all the old men I’d never had the chance to meet. In Russia, where I grew up, men rarely made it to that age. They were destroyed unceremoniously, ground up by constantly changing regimes or consumed by social catastrophes. They champed at the bit and pulled the cart until they died of exhaustion, numbing the pain with alcohol and tobacco as they trudged along.

The Anglo-spheric “okay, boomer” attitude feels very “let them eat cake” to me. What out of touch audacity! Do these boomer-haters not realize that some countries don’t even have boomers, that they are precious specimens to be cherished, especially male ones? In some parts of the world, the idea that old age is a given is laughable. Societies with grandpas are a luxury.

In my own family, my favorite people were always the old ones. There was my grandmother, who raised me. She was born in 1923. To me, she embodies why people from that time were called the Greatest Generation. I was awed by everything about her, from the way she casually flicked open her cigarette tin, to her very straight yet nonchalant posture and laconic ways.

Even her handwriting was a marvel to me. Not the generically perfect cursive of her peers, indistinguishable from one another. No, she was an architect’s daughter who’d started drafter training herself when WW2 broke out. Her handwriting was a statement, following in her father’s flamboyant Art Deco footsteps. She didn’t adhere to the rules of cursive I failed to master in my feeble once-a-month Russian school abroad. Her letters were round and portly, unslanted. The descenders hung off the lines in whimsical squiggles. The d’s were dandy anarchy altogether. I’d never seen anything like it, and tried to copy it in my teens. I close my eyes and see her trademark alphabet on the postcards she wrote me.

In the little bag of treasures I brought with me when I moved to the US is an engraved button from her favorite cardigan.

Then there were my two distant uncles, the twice-removed variety of family ties I couldn’t properly name in any language. One was a poet, the other a rocket scientist. They came before the boomers, born in 1945 and earlier. The poet was all good-natured suaveness from a bygone era, booming voice and luxurious head of white hair, pulling stanzas out of the air, especially when around good-looking women. He made you feel like the only girl in the room.

His younger brother, the scientist, was curt and snappy. Aside from the basic decorum of pouring wine and holding doors, he made the darnedest comments. When I met the two of them after we’d moved back to Moscow in the 1990s, he was mildly suspicious of the true extent of my Russianness. During one of our first encounters, he was recounting a sporting event with many Swedes present. “Those big Swedish women everywhere”, he went on, paused, brushed over me with a glance, and added, “She looks like one.”

At thirteen, I was gravely insulted and thought I might hate him. It turned out that hanging out with the two elderly brothers became my favorite family get-together. In the early years of dating my now-husband, I didn’t care about my parents’ approval, but it mattered to me that these two liked him.

As a young adult living in Moscow, the overwhelming majority of old people in the city were women. My uncles remained in my life, but old men were an endangered species. You might spot an old Muscovite on the tram, jingling along in his woolen cap, nose deep in an Evening Moscow newspaper. That was a special treat. I always studied them furtively, their wiry bushy brows taut with concentration, admiring the deliberate way their knotty fingers held the paper and the halo of purpose around them.

In my travels throughout my twenties, I noted the older people in other countries. For starters, there were more of them, and men abounded. One of my favorite things about Rome was the dignified elegance of the older women, especially the way they kept their legs slender and shapely, chic in opaque winter tights and smart shoes. The elderly ladies in Barcelona proudly airing their furs in front of churches on Sundays. The charming Lisbon grandpas with their coffees, basking in the sunlight like pleased cats, corduroy-clad legs leisurely stretched out before them. To me, they were a testament to continuity and cultural succession like I’d never seen before in my battered country, where intact survival into old age was an anomaly rather than a rule. They were an inspiring glimpse into what could be.

I come from a society where no one thought about the future. Our parents – the same boomers - lived through complete societal collapse, their entire savings vanishing in a day, dealing with hunger, complete insecurity and pervasive criminality all around, humiliation and poverty.

My generation internalized that nothing and no one is to be trusted, and nothing lasts. Pensions and retirement are a scam and a joke, currencies deflate in the blink of an eye and systems turn to dust. We lived day to day, embracing a Slavic version of la vida loca. There was never a visible, predictable timeline, no later years to plan for, only today, now.

My father is now in his seventies. I love the sheer scope people of his generation possess. He can always be referred to for details on literature, classical painting or ballet. When he visits someone at a sprawling multi-building hospital, he somehow ends up chatting up a young doctor on her smoke break with back-and-forth recitations of Mayakovsky. It’s safe to say that these boomers have more rizz than most thirty- or forty-year-olds.

Since moving to America, I’ve discovered that the most interesting people to randomly talk to are also the older ones. I’ve collected a set of “my grandpa boyfriends,” as my son calls them, while walking the dog - and I find them all irresistible. Who wants to discuss their rescue dog’s life story or the town school with people my own age? I meet these people and never remember them, as they all merge into one collective nameless person with a labradoodle speaking in AI-esque platitudes. But I sure remember the grandpas.

They are textured, three-dimensional characters with something of substance to say. They also have an unanesthetized sense of humor that I love and opinions they don’t preface with profuse disclaimers. There’s a straightforward, unapologetic streak to them, a lack of phoniness.

There’s the tall, handsome one that I admire, who is never seen in shorts or a baseball cap. There’s the one who always discusses politics – my dog knows it’s going to be a while when we meet him, so she lies right down in the grass. There’s the opera connoisseur with whom I share my latest subscription details.

In the park, I sometimes see groups of Indian women in traditional clothing, floating gracefully down the path, deep in discussion. The bracelets on their wrists chime as their voices crescendo and fall again. As this cooing human cloud of muslin and chiffon drifts past me, I think about how lucky their families are to have them, these charismatic elderly matriarchs emanating tradition, affection and safety. I bet none of their relatives dismiss them as lowly boomers.

I was recently walking behind a couple listening to retro Spanish music and occasionally cawing out a word or two of the lyrics. They walked on, holding hands tightly and singing along solemnly, like an advertisement for the beauty of old age.

What’s new to me here is how active and alive all the old people are, even deep into their seventies. My neighbor is always doing things to his house and garden, towering over all of it like a cross between a Viking and the mad professor from Back to the Future. Other neighbors his age still hike, laden with heavy backpacks. You get all sorts of perky grandmas marching around in their weighted vests. They are all celebrations of life to me, something to aspire to and look forward to.

I feel a strange and wondrous sense of accomplishment about making it to forty in one piece. I never envisioned myself at this age, and just being alive and healthy feels like a triumph. Some old classmates and friends dropped out of the race entirely, and there were plenty of derailed lives and sad stories. I never had the gall to assume I’d get this far and in great shape.

Being so easily injured and bothered by other generations’ critiques of your choices and values speaks only to immense insecurity and immaturity. Generations have sparred throughout history. This confrontation has been reflected in literature from Shakespeare’s King Lear to Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Pinning the blame for every conceivable world problem on the previous generation, like Eeyore’s tail, and calling it a day is very convenient but also terribly lame.

The vitriol behind the “okay, boomer” sentiment is repugnant to me. I wish Russian boomers could have eased into old age with even a fraction of the same dignity and predictability. Many others around the world likely dream of that too. I don’t understand the urge to mock or invalidate elderly people, the seething envy at their comfort in the evening of their lives. We are all part of a common timeline, like nesting dolls emerging out of one another. Integral parts of one whole. To me, they are a reassurance and a preview of life that goes on.

That old man by the sea didn’t know me and owed me nothing, yet he was compelled to share his knowledge, making my life a little better. To me, that’s what old age is about - not a joke or a burden, but a living well of wisdom and experience. The blessing of having someone tap the fruit for you, so one day you can do the same for those who follow.