What's Next?

I am a great fan of Joan Didion, author of such delicacies as A Book of Common Prayer, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, and her latest , Blue Nights. I envy her facility with language, but I do not envy her life. In Blue Nights , the memoir of her daughter's life and death, Didion writes: " Aging and its evidence remain life's most predictable events, yet they also remain matters we prefer to leave unmentioned, unexplored : I have watched tears flood the eyes of grown women, loved women, women of talent and accomplishment, for no reason other than that a small child in the room, more often an adored niece or nephew, has just described them as "wrinkly" or asked how old they are." Didion's life and work exists in the surreal world of movies, television, and the theatre. She writes for every venue, and her personal and social lives are filled with talented people who depend on their appearance, either wholly or in part, to earn a living an...

As a lifelong Baby Boomer, I am used to being included in a major cohort of Americans. I've gone through all the angst that my generation experienced, and I did fairly well, right up to this year. But this year, you see, is the beginning of my final five--the five years before Social Security. This year begins the final lap of my life as an employee, and every day seems to be a greater challenge than the day before. Like all living beings, I have spent my lifetime adapting to change and wondering if I can still learn more. I  find that yes, I can learn more; I just can't learn it in 30 minutes or less. Every physical challenge makes me ask: can I do that? I still can, but sometimes I have to rest. Adapting to change is tough. I remember my mother wondering, in her seventh decade, why everything moved so fast. Why was everything so complicated? And could I please send her granddaughter over to program her television for cable? We offered to buy her a VCR to watch movie...