So it begins...

Being a sixty something author I was encouraged by my thirty-something son who's a producer, director, writer, etc. to write a book about what really goes on with women my age. After all, he said in not these words, you and your friends aren't over the hill. And it's true. I don't feel "old". Romance, sex, intimacy, friendship...they're all still very much a part of my life, my friends' lives. But with a twist. We've got grown kids, some of us have grand-kids, elderly parents. We've got health issues, fears, unfulfilled dreams and time is definitely more of an issue for us.  In short, we've got issues that weren't a factor in our lives before. When we lunch our conversations run the gamut of all these issues. But none of us are done with romance, sex, passion, fantasy. If you're in your sixties you know. If you haven't gotten there yet, you will find out...

So I spent the greater part of the past year writing this manuscript about six close friends who happen to live in my "neighborhood". It's called BETTER LATE. The double entendre is, naturally, deliberate. Now the characters in my book are fictional. But the feelings, desires, needs, fears, the things we share and don't share, are real. I'm a part of all these women. All my friends are parts of all these women. I wanted to capture universal issues and I wanted to share the intimate truths that bind women together. Friendship. It's a big deal at any age. Getting older makes getting closer easier for some of us, harder for others. I wanted to capture that. I wanted to create romantic vignettes for each of "my friends" that could happen, have happened, even wish would happen. Jessie goes to her 50th high school reunion to see the "boy" she had a secret crush on all through high school. Leah, a widow, goes on her first date since she was nineteen and got married. Deb is overcome by jealousy when her husband's long ago girlfriend contacts him from out of the blue. And so it goes. And so it has gone for many of us.

This is the start of my blog. I want to go beyond my book. I want to talk with all of you out there, women and men of any age about what it really means to enter that last quarter of our lives. I'm searching for ways to define who I am now, who my husband is, who we all are. I feel young and old sometimes at the same time. I picture myself one way then I look in the mirror and...Is that my mother looking back at me? I spend time with my grand-children and one minute I'm catapulted back to being a young mom with my kids, the next minute I'm thinking thank God I don't actually have to actually raise these wonderful, exuberant, exhausting children and how did I ever do it in the first place. So I'm old and young. I'm optimistic and pessimistic. I still have so much I want to do. I make plans, have dreams. I find myself veering away from people who've "gotten old". I adore my friends not only for their loyalty, my ease in confiding in them and they in me, our shared laughter and tears and fears, but also because every last one of them is still full of life.  I say better late and I mean it in both interpretations.

Writing a blog was something I've been wanting to do for a while now. It took some coaxing from friends and family to actually begin it but less than it would have a couple or more decades back. Maybe it's a combo of less to lose, more to gain. Maybe I'm finally old enough to take more risks.

I'll have to see how many risks I'm willing to take here. Those of you who join me here will have to see as well. And maybe some of you out there will take some risks as well, join me and share your thoughts, ideas, dreams, fears, whatever. I hope so.