Reprise!

I discovered the following among the drafts that I never published. I don't know why I abandoned it. Rather than delete it forever I think I'll publish it now!

INTRODUCTION

My family and friends have been encouraging me to “write” for many years. So I have resolved on the first day of this New Year 1007 to start a blog. I have been a regular blog reader for quite a while but the thought of writing one myself is a little scary. I’m not at all sure of what to write about.

I suppose I will start by sharing some of my thoughts and feelings about growing older and being an older woman in a culture obsessed with youth and sex. I think it was Art Linkletter who said many years ago that, “growing older is not for sissies.” I am certainly finding that to be true.

Two years ago I celebrated my seventieth birthday. My four children and their spouses and my sixteen grandchildren gathered from Kansas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Tennessee, Florida and Iraq, traveling a total of 3500 miles to host a party for me. It was a wonderful party and the first time that all my family has been together in one place since my children grew up and left home. And I was thrilled to have a family portrait taken with me in the middle as the grand matriarch of a family of 25! Not bad for an only child!

I am in good health and happy most of the time. However daily I am ever more aware of the fact that the older we grow the less our outside appearance reflects the reality of our inner life. In her later years my mother frequently protested, “But I feel young!” And she was offended at my suggestion that perhaps she qualified for the status of “old” when she was eighty years. In our culture the word “old” is a bad word with many negative connotations.