On Aging

AGING IS SLIPPAGE. Wax, then wane, toward humble pie, another day, another dollar. I was born a month after Franklin Roosevelt was elected president. So I clean my plate at meals and follow that famous bit of fatherly advice, Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Wry but spry, I never mortgaged my future and though I pee more often now, my wallet, at least, is tumid. When dressing, I may forget my second shoe; I wear long underwear for half the year. Sightlessness has various effects. If you’ve driven for almost 70 years, shouldn’t that be enough? So many worries hitch a ride on your car. Oil change, check the tires. The BBC will give you world news when you can’t read the Times. Exercise cautiously, not to slip or pull a ligament. Tamp down one’s crabby self. The luxury of shedding a rigid daily schedule should be solace enough. In a free country we each have written our own script for decades, and patience is a craft we ought to have mastered long ago. Pop-up memories produce the names of five girls from my eighth-grade class. God bless them if they’re okay. A lot has changed for girls since 1945, and for someone headed for the writing game as well. My first agent and my best publisher were handling William Faulkner at the same time as me. That is, it was possible then to be William Faulkner—a towering genius in a now-eclipsed field. I didn’t know him but did meet two other Nobel winners: Steinbeck and Bellow, whose careers would seem miniaturized nowadays.