Five years ago I stopped coloring my hair. Let the gray shine in.
“Want to look current, hip, with it …YOUNG?” The question comes my way from magazines, websites and TV and maybe that’s all I need to tell you. Of course I’m supposed to scream, “Yes!” Then read about how to do it. And buy stuff from the advertisers.
How my handmade quilt became a symbol of my relationship with my daughter.
I made the bed today in my younger daughter Samantha’s old room with a quilt I pieced together by hand. The quilt wasn’t supposed to be here in my apartment, dressing up Sam’s girlhood bed. It was supposed to be with Sam, in her grownup home. But things took a different turn than I’d anticipated.
Why late in life I became a neo-feminist.
“What do you mean, you’re not a feminist?” the guy across the restaurant table demanded hotly. I don’t remember his name or face—we’re talking the fall of 1968—but I remember his smug certainty. “Of course you’re a feminist.”
“I’m a humanist,” I said loftily. I was 26, a freelance writer and a semi-wild Village chick—a parody of Jules Feiffer’s parodies of girls like me. Along with everyone else I knew, I was on fire with political passions. But the women’s movement left me cold.
An unsentimental truth: Life back then wasn’t perfect.
In our 20s and 30s, grown-up but not yet old, we felt everything was possible: love, work, unfolding of the spirit, life lived with flair and endless energy. Suddenly, we’re 40, 50, 64, 80-something. And no matter how happy and vital we are, there are days when we’re overwhelmed by what we’ve lost.
The cure for the blues: take off the rose-colored glasses. Being young wasn’t always wonderful. The world has turned; we’ve changed. There’s a bunch of stuff we’re glad—giddy with gratitude—not to have to do again.
