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March 27, 2012

Comments

Beth,
This is a subject that is on my mind a lot as I am in my sixties. I feel rooted at home, with all my close friends here, yet my son is far away in California. I thought your move to Canada was an incredibly courageous one. Have you ever thought of writing more about your actual move, about the impetus to go and the challenges and anxieties as well as hopes for the future? Maybe your next book?

We talked a lot about these kinds of changes in the Sage-ing class I took last year. I think you're right that as we age, some become more flexible and others seem to become more brittle. I admire so much that you are taking the first of those two paths.

You wouldn't be *allowed* to play shuffleboard in those heels!

I would say that you are growing older in a very pleasant style! Must say that the numbers don't bother me any more. (Lack of bones, now: that bothers me! But that's lucky, as one then feels motivated to do something about it.)

Martha and I are often startled to note how far out of the mainstream we are in thinking often and easily of decrepitude and death. Things like buying a single-story house partly because in twenty or thirty years one or both of us might not be able to negotiate stairs, that seems neither morbid nor odd to us. We're planning on getting feeble and dying: hopefully not too soon, of course, but it's not up to us. People tend to inquire if you're depressed, if you say such things in public, or to respond as if you're letting down the team by imagining such things. Surely the alternative is violent, sudden death? How is that less depressing? You can't make the world go away by closing your eyes.

Great photo.

You have crystallized what I've been grappling with over the last few years. I find I am not afraid of what is going to happen as I am about how the people around me will react to it. You both seem to have the same attitude toward life's changes, which I think is crucial to the success of long term relationships.

And high heeled boots help!

I had a long conversation with my best friend today about identity. I have just spent some time reading backwards through your blog entries, and oh, Beth, how I have missed you. My life has been in a great deal of upheaval and I stopped reading blogs completely for a while. One major issue for me right now is my identity. With my children growing up, older family members growing sick and even dying, my place in this world feels uncertain. Your posts are a comfort to me. Thank you, lovely Beth.

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Who was Cassandra?


  • In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.

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