Another Milepost

In 1969, for the first time in my life, I remembered experiencing a news event that happened a whole decade ago! It was the big tainted cranberry scare of 1959 – some cranberries grown in Oregon were tainted with an insecticide, aminotriazole, and nobody wanted to have cranberry sauce that Thanksgiving.

Later it was 20-year-old, 30, 40, and now today July 26th 50-year-old stories. Today is the anniversary of the collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm in the North Atlantic.

I’m feeling old. My daughter, Karen, is feeling old at 28. All I tell her is just wait.

There is an article in this week’s Newsweek about author Nora Ephron and her book about aging "I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman".

Some of her quotes are:


“Childbirth is no fun, but at the end you get a big present.”

“For the last 15 years I’ve been reading pieces about how much happier you’re going to be when you get older and wiser and I just keep thinking, are they nuts? Are they not looking in the mirror? Are they not trying to hit their forehand back over the net without their shoulder going out?”

“Savor your neck, because I’m not kidding-it’s only a matter of seconds. Keep walking around in things that show it off, because soon you’re going to have to give them to Goodwill.”

“Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.”

“At the age of fifty-five you will get a saggy roll just above your waist even if you are painfully thin.”

“This saggy roll just above your waist will be especially visible from the back and will force you to reevaluate half the clothes in your closet, especially the white shirts.”

“Write everything down.”

“Keep a journal.”

“Take more pictures.”

So as I sit here this evening at age 57 ¾ with my shoulders aching and my butt sore, not wanting to get up because it hurts to move around, I wonder just how good my planned “30 good years” of retirement will be. Somehow, however, I am optimistic.