A good friend of mine once said: After the age of 40, you don’t get to feel one way about anything. It rang true 20 years ago and it rings true today. Ambivalence is a constant for people in their… Read More ›
Month: October 2009
The world is never ready for the birth of a child
The world seems a more dangerous place than ever before. Even a news junkie like me starts pressing the off button with each trumpeted description of personal, national or international tragedy, usually delivered by newscasters with a catch of excitement… Read More ›
End of the quest for self
Many years ago my friends and I talked endlessly about finding ourselves, about figuring out who we were. Some pursued their Ph.D.s. Some harvested sugar cane in Cuba. Some explored life on a commune. Some found partners who could reflect a self… Read More ›
To everything there is a season
First it was the birthdays, then the bar mitzvahs, then the sweet sixteens, the engagement parties, the weddings, the baby namings, the children’s birthdays, and weddings. Now it’s the retirements- forced and chosen. My friends and I echo Hamlet: To… Read More ›
On the downslope- enjoying the ride?
Judith Warner writes in her essay for the NY Times “I Feel It Coming Together”: This is the cruelty of middle age: just when things have gotten good-really, consistently good-I have become aware that they will end…. I now see… Read More ›
Mary Travers: may her memory be a blessing
Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary died at 72 a few weeks ago. The group’s version of Forever Young has always seemed like a prayer or blessing to me, moreso as the decades pass. This song/prayer is dedicated to Mary… Read More ›
More poems and prayers for the sixties
Prayers and poems are similar in that they use symbol and metaphor to express large thoughts. To get the most from both, you have to slow down. You can’t skim a prayer or scan a poem to fully savor it…. Read More ›
Special ballad for sixty somethings
When I’m Sixty-four When I get older losing my hair, Many years from now, Will you still be sending me a valentine Birthday greetings bottle of wine? If I’d been out till quarter to three Would you lock the door,… Read More ›
Prayer, sort of
Some minister once facetiously defined four types of prayer: Thanks, Gimme, Wow, and Oops. Sometimes, though, sixty-somethings need a different sort of prayer to get them through the night. Hope Old spirit, in and beyond me, keep, and extend me. Amid… Read More ›
Optimist or Optimist
In her recent book Bright-sided, Barbara Ehrenreich objects to the culture’s dogged attempt to change all lemons, no matter how sour, into the most saccharine of lemonades. She points with disgust to the cockeyed optimists who refused to allow her to… Read More ›
Now we are Sixty 