Old is... Great! [antikvár]

PrefaceOne of the reasons I wrote Old is great! was that all my contemporaries were out-lying me about their ages and they could do it more convincingly because they were childless or had yoimger children: when your son is in his twenties it gets more difficult.So I decided to savour growing older, to live it fully. I also find a lot of fun in the truth, because it is shocking and disarming and it makes me laugh - even at my own self deception, my own snobberies and my own vulnerability. I remember my mother at my age. She was a matron, and all the women of her generation were heavier and called each other 'girls'. They didn't have sex symbols like Liz Taylor or Jeanne Moreau to identify with. I find life a glory. I enjoy it, being a woman, discovering all the psychological changes. I want always to live, to see and to sense all the things and moments in life and not to miss anything. I simply wanted to share this experience with others - including a twenty-two year old actress in my dressing room who looked at herself forlornly in the mirror and soulfully moaned 'It's all going'! I want to share my own growing discovery of all the exciting things and sad things and warm things and funny things I feel. To deny any of this would seem irreligious to me.So, I wrote the captions to Old is great! as I heard them. I'd like to thank all the men who find me attractive, all my lovable friends who lie about their ages and who began to find Old is a game they could play themselves. The idea released something in them that was truthful. I'd like to thank my hairdresser, the people I enjoy, and especially my son who has contributed to it himself and laughs at my foibles with me.I once quoted Margaret Fuller with ecstasy (as I'm apt to do - I'm fond of ecstasy!): 'I accept the Universe!' The wisest of my husbands rephed 'But, Marcella, does it accept you?'I'm stm trying.MARCELLA MARKHAM