More Than Ever

INTRODUCTION

Right from the start, I must confess.  I am a coward.  Others think I have courage but they are mistaken.  For instance, I do not have the courage to write this Introduction.  It chills the blood in me and makes me feel as I did when I was called upon to give a verbal report in the classroom.

How does one write an introduction about 70 years of living?  About feeling more like it’s the beginning than possibly the end of life.  Most truthfully, after this vast collection of years, I have more in common with my teenage grandson than I do with anyone reaching maturity.  He is not quite certain where he is going.  Neither am I.  He has a multitude of choices.  So do I.  He will probably change his location, change his dreams, and change who he is.  So might I.

But that does not solve my problem now.  How do I write a preface to this book?  How do I make anyone understand what I am saying in “More Than Ever: A View From My Seventies” in just a few pages?” It took a lifetime to gather this information.  Through the repercussions of a depression, a world war, a polio epidemic, women’s liberation, several more wars, advancement in technology, and a trip to the moon.  How could anyone possibly sum that up adequately?  Try as I might, I just can’t do it.

I might list the credits and certainly there have been many during my professional writing years.  I might point to the body of work and boast a bit.  I could do all of that, but then what would it really tell you about this book? There are 87 million of us now over 50.  I am not alone in what I think and what I feel.  And in my confusion about being here.  I knew all about dying, but not quite enough about what I was expected to do, to be, to want, to desire in these later years.  If I lived.

How can I possibly make anyone else  understand what is to come?  Who would believe that someone at 70 after all these years of living could have so many questions and so few answers?  I could go on about the questions.  Why am I here?  Who cares?  Am I a burden?  A waste of time? Have things become mixed up,  the young dying before the old?  Where to live?  Who to love?  What to do?  It used to be so easy.  One expected to pass on in the fifties or sixties.  And that would be that.  But now through science and medical wonders, I am being gifted with 20 or even 30 more years.  And I am not alone.  Millions of others are receiving the same gift.  But how do we use it?  Retirement communities beckon.  So do cruises.  Assisted living is available.  Or living at home with home health care.  Or not needing anything but a live-in partner who shares the bills.  Choices everywhere.  Continue working.  Or play tennis, bingo, cards, and get a permanent.  Better yet, get a lover.

How do I explain to you why I keep my Rice Krispies and my Butter Krimpets in the linen closet?  And boxes of noodles and rice in my refrigerator?  Would you understand any of this in just a few pages?  What a mass of confusion this must seem.  A woman who has survived cancer afraid to drive more than 5 miles in one direction.  Mind you, one direction only.  A woman who has experienced widowhood after 35 years of marriage and finds herself in the singles scene again.  A woman whose grandchildren know she has three writing desks, but no knowledge of what other grandmoms do best.  Cook.

Who was I then, that woman protesting and demonstrating against nuclear plants, never wearing a bra, which by the way I must admit the habit continues, and involved in anything this world threw my way.  Who am I now, this woman who struggles with the computer each day, still runs eagerly toward the mailman every afternoon for there might be a surprise in his delivery?  Who am I now, this woman who is being courted as if she were sixteen again, making decisions about the future. As if there might be one?  Who is this woman who is rediscovering every moment, and what does all this mean anyway?

I admit to you before you read this book, I have failed to come to a conclusion.  But at my age