Hey Sari -- happy birthday to YOU. I have to be honest, it was hard for me to get past the sentence about not being scared so much by your current one as the one approaching in two years. Because it is that very one I am staring at 13 days from now. I will have to go back and read the rest of the piece -- likely once I've gotten past that enormous number -- although, truth be told, I AM scared. Very very scared. It sucks for so many reasons but mostly because so many people just won't let me SAY that. I get "oh, it's just another day" or "oh, you have so much to be thankful for" or "it's ONLY 60" or insert any other dismissive comment there. And it shuts me down and makes me feel even shittier that....am I the only fucking person to be really terrified and sad about turning 60 in mere days? I have tears in my eyes as I even write this! I keep trying to work on a project to help me mark it. But every idea I have involves daily photos of me or postcards to myself each day, reminding myself of what I might be saying goodbye to as well as hello to. The goodbye part comes easily, especially when I combine with with an image of myself from that day. The hello part? Not so easy. I'll keep working on it because I haven't been able to come up with anything else that feels RIGHT. I'm thinking maybe I should do it over a year, from the free fall I'm feeling right now into...who knows what? Ack. Sorry this turned into a comment about me, me, me. Back to you, you, you -- truly, enjoy THIS day. I hope there is some delicious cake in the day ahead. Happy birthday. XO
Susan, thanks for sharing this. I hear you, and I think there should be room to talk about the uncomfortable and scary parts of getting older. Taking a year to digest it makes sense to me. Happy almost birthday! 💕
I relate--I turned 60 in August and it felt major. Over the summer I planned a few things that I really wanted to do to honor the occasion. I got through it! This past year I’ve had friends my age become ill and one died, so living life suddenly became more urgent. Happy birthday!
Please let yourself grieve for your younger self. It will pass. In a culture that reveres youth, we’re not taught how to grow older in a positive way. I’m 74 and still trying to figure it out.
I am ashamed to admit that as soon as I started reading your comment, my mind leapt to thinking of things I could say to reassure you. Your next few sentences were a much-needed and gentle rebuke. It occurs to me after reading how it shuts you down to hear those reassurances that even for myself, who passed the 60 mark already, there is this culture-wide discomfort with allowing space for people to mourn our youth in a holistic way, which necessarily includes feeling all the feelings about it. Maybe, especially the feelings that aren't a "practical" response to the very symbolic marker of a number ending in 0. These are the feelings that we - collectively - encourage others not to express in public. And while I don't yet have a grasp on what the source of that cultural more might be, it feels significant and important.
That was a very long-winded way of saying "Thank you," and "I'm sorry," and "I hear you now." It is courageous of you to share your feelings both about turning 60 and about how much others have shut you down. It's truly unfortunate how many of of us are tempted to crowd the space you need to feel the feelings with suffocating denials of the importance of really feeling everything that is present in the experience of crossing from one side of a milestone to the other. 🙏
I honestly don't even know how to respond this moment to your comment because it has moved me so much and is so utterly kind and...heartful...that I just have tears spontaneously streaming down my face right now. Thank you. Thank you for your words, what you expressed. It seems more than anything else, there is such grace in the space you offered me, just to be, right this moment, exactly where I am. These tears feel like a real reflection of, yes, how fucking mournful I feel right now, saying goodbye to so many things that are going, are gone, now only memories. But, I know the shock of feeling heard, seen., NOT shut down...the power of being witnessed. That means so very much to me. Just...thank you so so much. X
As a musician, I feel this story so very much. I remind myself that it’s the music in my life that is important, more so than the musical instruments (though the bond between a musician and their instrument should never be underestimated). I felt a sense of relief when you wrote of your guitar and songwriting. While your writing is a creative outlet that fills your soul, learning a new creative process as we age is incredibly important. And it’s good to be bad at something as we grow older. https://russgrazier.substack.com/p/7-its-good-to-be-bad-at-something
I have an upright piano in my Brooklyn apartment, unexpectedly sent to us by my mom on 3 days notice because she couldn't bear her Asian grandchildren not knowing how to play the piano (I grew up with lessons and later became a music major). I always wonder how the hell and when I'm going to get that thing out of the apartment when the time comes because no on has played it for 2 years now.
So I feel this, I really do.
Also, Milton Glaser's I Love NY will always be the logo. Happy birthday!
Jenna, thank you for letting me know you relate! Despite our different backgrounds. So much family expectation in a piano! Good luck figuring it out. 💕
I loved reading this, Sari. A piano that’s been in the family for generations is very alive, and no small thing to let go of. Especially if you’ve spent hundreds of childhood hours practicing on it, avoiding practicing on it, hearing family members write songs on it, or gathered around it every Sunday afternoon to sing show tunes with your mother and aunt—all of which I did growing up. Our family’s baby grand was like an altar in that way, a place where the fingerprints of laughter and heartache collected like alms. But by the time I let it go, it wouldn’t stay in tune and needed much more work than I could afford, so I had to come up with new altars: poems and essays about what used to happen around that piano. I love how you filled the empty space of your surrendered upright with a guitar and songs you wrote. It’s like setting free a log that’s been clogging and stagnating a creek. Everything comes alive again—the log gets to float, the piano gets to be played, the water and music get to flow. Thanks for this piece—you’ve inspired me—I’m going to give flight to the dust motes on my electric Yamaha now.
My albatross was a car. A 1928 Ford Model A that my father restored when I was thirteen. Dad passed in 2003 and the car became mine. I loved it and resented it for all the burdens of ownership it put on me. Good memories and bad collided until the finally grand slam on June 30th, 2023 when my middle son rear ended someone resulting in only mine or bruises for him, thank goodness, and a total loss of the vehicle.
It is amazing how inanimate objects can tether so much emotion.
From the viewpoint of a healthy and active 73 year old -- if my upcoming birthday were my 58th I’d be so delighted! To have so much more energy and “bandwidth” than I have now would be just grand. Seventy three is not bad, mind you, but please enjoy your youth. I recently found a photo of myself from about 40 years ago, wearing next to nothing, and was struck -- I used to think I was fat! My god, I was perfect!
Thank you! And boy do I wish it didn't take us years to appreciate photos of ourselves! For what it's worth, I currently hate the photo of myself in the I <3 NY shirt. A year from now I'll ask myself what my problem was.
Maybe a good birthday tradition to start is to get a pal to take some seriously flattering pictures of you. Pay attention to good light and think about some animal you love. Get a blow out and eat an awesome dessert if that contributes to the look of joy.
You’ll be glad to have it in the years to come.
I had a BF do this for me 30+ years ago and it’s wonderful to know, have the record.
They don’t wish us a Socially Acceptable Beauty Standard Birthday. It’s HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
And, I just remembered this: when my son was 4 years old, he came across a drawing/scrawling he had done two years earlier. I said, “you made this when you were two!” He actually teared up and said, “I used to be young.” Perspective.
I also have a multi-generational family piano that I would love to get rid of because it's absolutely weighing me down. It was originally owned by my grandfather's voice teacher, with whom he traveled throughout the Midwest performing as a boy soprano. That teacher eventually moved in with my dad's family and lived with them until he died, leaving it to my grandfather, who eventually left it to me. Except I was a junior in high school and what was I going to do with a baby grand piano? So, it went to my aunt until I was 32 and finally had a house with a whole room just for the piano.
When my marriage ended I had to put it in climate-controlled storage for a year and a half. That's when it really became a stone around my neck, and even though I technically have the space for it now, the truth is I don't want it despite the family significance. No one in my household plays and it is a massive waste of a lovely instrument. So, y'know, if you wanna move a sweet baby grand from Western New York to the Hudson Valley we should talk...
Happy birthday! For me, each decade gets better, so throw yourself a big party for your 60th! I turn 65 later this month and need to figure out how to celebrate my birthday month.
The emotional attachment to things and the guilt attached to it (and the things) is real. It’s a major struggle for me. Thanks for your insight.
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 2, 2023Liked by Sari Botton
I can't love this post enough. Happy birthday! I turn 65 this month, making me not only a senior (and what is a senior, exactly?), but a card-carrying one. Fun fact: many of us can't wait to hit 65 due to insurance issues, and that wonderful new Medicare card that alleviates all manner of insurance woes. My memoir (There's a Clydesdale in the Attic: Reflections on Keeping and Letting Go) contains my stories similar to this one. We keep things for many reasons, summarized as memories and emotions. Or I should say, many of us do. But when we truly examine the actual objects of our affection, sometimes letting them go isn't hard. I toted homemade, 4-H prom dresses (don't judge, I'm a Midwestern farm girl from way back) around from residence to residence, basement to closet to attic ever since 1977. Why? Saving them for the daughters who would enjoy them for dress-up play. Ha! Never had daughters. So ditch them? Not me. I'll save them for the granddaughters. Still hoping for those to arrive, then realized if they ever show up, they wouldn't want these old things. I let them go to that great senior prom in the sky. It wasn't even hard. The freed space is its own reward. It allows room for something new, or just for ... free space, akin to white margins in a notebook. Soothing to the eye and a place for future dreams and projects to emerge. You and I come from two different "worlds," (I'm rural-rooted in Indiana) and you're so much younger (yes, you are), yet I love how I connect with many things you write, and I too, have a fascination with how we all "do" age.
I was forced to move last year and had to seriously downsize for the second time. Found so much family history and artifacts as sole survivor. It was overwhelming and I got stuck in the middle of it.
Now, having ALL this stuff spread and piled in the tiny new space, I am finally just getting sick of it.
It took TIME for those emotionally laden objects to lose that aura and become just ‘stuff’. I lost some very valuable books and artifacts to water damage and there was a period of just hanging on to whatever had survived. Glad that has passed…
Sometimes we just have to go through the healing process before we can change our perspective.
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 2, 2023Liked by Sari Botton
Ali, I do community programs called What We Keep. One attendee told me that her home sold immediately after listing it and she had to quickly move elsewhere. No time for gentle sorting! There were several containers of half-done projects that she felt guilty about never finishing, and no doubt had vague notions that one day she would finish them. But instead of taking them into her new space, she let them go. She explained that it was great to claim the space those projects claimed in her mind and in her home. She had a new home, new plans, and new projects and dreams to pursue. I thought it was a lovely thought pattern. Kudos to you on your journey. In the end, it all truly is just "stuff." Well said.
“Reclaim the space for new projects.” It can definitely be an either/or matter.
Oh the half finished projects!
That would make a very scary Halloween costume: HAUNTING!!!
I kept little ones that still interest me., like beads. We’re lucky in Seattle to have an art supply recycle store, Recreative, so any guilt is replaced with good dopamine blasts.
Wow, Sari, I did a double-take when I saw this picture because you look a lot like me circa 1971, and I think our pianos were twins. Just a couple of weeks ago, I wondered out loud to my mom what happened to that piano. It was in my parents' last house, but it's not in their apartment now. My mom, who's in the early stages of let's call it forgetting things, just shrugged, which is weird because she's the one who really played. I only took lessons and played badly. But when I realized I don't know where that piano ended up, I felt a little bit bad about it. I lived on the Upper East Side in the early 90s for graduate school, which sounds nicer than it was (York Avenue), but I never had to figure out how to put a piano in my shared railroad flat. I can assure you that my daughter's piano now sits entirely unplayed when she's away at college and that while I think (at 57 btw) of playing it somtimes, there is always a better way to spend my precious time! Anyway, really enjoyed this and enjoy your newsletter overall.
Happy happy birthday, Sari! Thanks so much for all you've given us. I've got TWO pianos in my house that I'm trying to cut loose but sentiment and practicality are at war. One is from my childhood, but the other one is a better instrument. I'll keep one, but which one? Sentiment is a clever fighter. Tbd.
it's a wonderful piece, sari—and how wonderful you got the news about the notable mention on your birthday! yes, that scary threshold is looming (don't i know it!) but you've done so much with oldster to open up the conversation about aging; it's helped me and i'm sure others to make it less daunting. so enjoy your day and HAPPY FIFTY FUCKING EIGHT!!!
Hey Sari -- happy birthday to YOU. I have to be honest, it was hard for me to get past the sentence about not being scared so much by your current one as the one approaching in two years. Because it is that very one I am staring at 13 days from now. I will have to go back and read the rest of the piece -- likely once I've gotten past that enormous number -- although, truth be told, I AM scared. Very very scared. It sucks for so many reasons but mostly because so many people just won't let me SAY that. I get "oh, it's just another day" or "oh, you have so much to be thankful for" or "it's ONLY 60" or insert any other dismissive comment there. And it shuts me down and makes me feel even shittier that....am I the only fucking person to be really terrified and sad about turning 60 in mere days? I have tears in my eyes as I even write this! I keep trying to work on a project to help me mark it. But every idea I have involves daily photos of me or postcards to myself each day, reminding myself of what I might be saying goodbye to as well as hello to. The goodbye part comes easily, especially when I combine with with an image of myself from that day. The hello part? Not so easy. I'll keep working on it because I haven't been able to come up with anything else that feels RIGHT. I'm thinking maybe I should do it over a year, from the free fall I'm feeling right now into...who knows what? Ack. Sorry this turned into a comment about me, me, me. Back to you, you, you -- truly, enjoy THIS day. I hope there is some delicious cake in the day ahead. Happy birthday. XO
Susan, thanks for sharing this. I hear you, and I think there should be room to talk about the uncomfortable and scary parts of getting older. Taking a year to digest it makes sense to me. Happy almost birthday! 💕
I relate--I turned 60 in August and it felt major. Over the summer I planned a few things that I really wanted to do to honor the occasion. I got through it! This past year I’ve had friends my age become ill and one died, so living life suddenly became more urgent. Happy birthday!
So sorry for your loss.
Please let yourself grieve for your younger self. It will pass. In a culture that reveres youth, we’re not taught how to grow older in a positive way. I’m 74 and still trying to figure it out.
I am ashamed to admit that as soon as I started reading your comment, my mind leapt to thinking of things I could say to reassure you. Your next few sentences were a much-needed and gentle rebuke. It occurs to me after reading how it shuts you down to hear those reassurances that even for myself, who passed the 60 mark already, there is this culture-wide discomfort with allowing space for people to mourn our youth in a holistic way, which necessarily includes feeling all the feelings about it. Maybe, especially the feelings that aren't a "practical" response to the very symbolic marker of a number ending in 0. These are the feelings that we - collectively - encourage others not to express in public. And while I don't yet have a grasp on what the source of that cultural more might be, it feels significant and important.
That was a very long-winded way of saying "Thank you," and "I'm sorry," and "I hear you now." It is courageous of you to share your feelings both about turning 60 and about how much others have shut you down. It's truly unfortunate how many of of us are tempted to crowd the space you need to feel the feelings with suffocating denials of the importance of really feeling everything that is present in the experience of crossing from one side of a milestone to the other. 🙏
I honestly don't even know how to respond this moment to your comment because it has moved me so much and is so utterly kind and...heartful...that I just have tears spontaneously streaming down my face right now. Thank you. Thank you for your words, what you expressed. It seems more than anything else, there is such grace in the space you offered me, just to be, right this moment, exactly where I am. These tears feel like a real reflection of, yes, how fucking mournful I feel right now, saying goodbye to so many things that are going, are gone, now only memories. But, I know the shock of feeling heard, seen., NOT shut down...the power of being witnessed. That means so very much to me. Just...thank you so so much. X
I am so glad that my words were beneficial. 💚🙏
Another wonderful essay. Thank you. And Happy fifty-fucking-eighth. A month from today, I will be seventy-fucking-one. Consider the alternative.
You’re right! Happy almost 71st.
Thank you. And I forgot to say: congratulations on the recognition for your own essay, not just your editorial skills. That is HUGE!!!
And I turned seventy fffffking two - three weeks ago. No big deal. Wish I could not be breathless easily, though...🧘🙏 Wish y'all happy everyday 🌹🌞
Happiest of Happy Birthdays, Sari!!!
Thank you so much, E. Jean! 😘
As a musician, I feel this story so very much. I remind myself that it’s the music in my life that is important, more so than the musical instruments (though the bond between a musician and their instrument should never be underestimated). I felt a sense of relief when you wrote of your guitar and songwriting. While your writing is a creative outlet that fills your soul, learning a new creative process as we age is incredibly important. And it’s good to be bad at something as we grow older. https://russgrazier.substack.com/p/7-its-good-to-be-bad-at-something
Yes, good to be bad at something!
I have an upright piano in my Brooklyn apartment, unexpectedly sent to us by my mom on 3 days notice because she couldn't bear her Asian grandchildren not knowing how to play the piano (I grew up with lessons and later became a music major). I always wonder how the hell and when I'm going to get that thing out of the apartment when the time comes because no on has played it for 2 years now.
So I feel this, I really do.
Also, Milton Glaser's I Love NY will always be the logo. Happy birthday!
Jenna, thank you for letting me know you relate! Despite our different backgrounds. So much family expectation in a piano! Good luck figuring it out. 💕
I loved reading this, Sari. A piano that’s been in the family for generations is very alive, and no small thing to let go of. Especially if you’ve spent hundreds of childhood hours practicing on it, avoiding practicing on it, hearing family members write songs on it, or gathered around it every Sunday afternoon to sing show tunes with your mother and aunt—all of which I did growing up. Our family’s baby grand was like an altar in that way, a place where the fingerprints of laughter and heartache collected like alms. But by the time I let it go, it wouldn’t stay in tune and needed much more work than I could afford, so I had to come up with new altars: poems and essays about what used to happen around that piano. I love how you filled the empty space of your surrendered upright with a guitar and songs you wrote. It’s like setting free a log that’s been clogging and stagnating a creek. Everything comes alive again—the log gets to float, the piano gets to be played, the water and music get to flow. Thanks for this piece—you’ve inspired me—I’m going to give flight to the dust motes on my electric Yamaha now.
My albatross was a car. A 1928 Ford Model A that my father restored when I was thirteen. Dad passed in 2003 and the car became mine. I loved it and resented it for all the burdens of ownership it put on me. Good memories and bad collided until the finally grand slam on June 30th, 2023 when my middle son rear ended someone resulting in only mine or bruises for him, thank goodness, and a total loss of the vehicle.
It is amazing how inanimate objects can tether so much emotion.
Wow, yes. And glad your son wasn't badly hurt.
PS. I will be 58 in February and I too wonder how 60 will change me, if it does at all…
I guess they’re just numbers...
From the viewpoint of a healthy and active 73 year old -- if my upcoming birthday were my 58th I’d be so delighted! To have so much more energy and “bandwidth” than I have now would be just grand. Seventy three is not bad, mind you, but please enjoy your youth. I recently found a photo of myself from about 40 years ago, wearing next to nothing, and was struck -- I used to think I was fat! My god, I was perfect!
Thank you! And boy do I wish it didn't take us years to appreciate photos of ourselves! For what it's worth, I currently hate the photo of myself in the I <3 NY shirt. A year from now I'll ask myself what my problem was.
Maybe a good birthday tradition to start is to get a pal to take some seriously flattering pictures of you. Pay attention to good light and think about some animal you love. Get a blow out and eat an awesome dessert if that contributes to the look of joy.
You’ll be glad to have it in the years to come.
I had a BF do this for me 30+ years ago and it’s wonderful to know, have the record.
They don’t wish us a Socially Acceptable Beauty Standard Birthday. It’s HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Wheeeeee
Snork the whipped cream right from the can! 🥳
And, I just remembered this: when my son was 4 years old, he came across a drawing/scrawling he had done two years earlier. I said, “you made this when you were two!” He actually teared up and said, “I used to be young.” Perspective.
OMG.
I had that experience too.🤷♀️ I had a body like Raquel Welch's. Now I'm a stick but I like sticks. Suits me.
Happy birthday!! Eat cake!
I also have a multi-generational family piano that I would love to get rid of because it's absolutely weighing me down. It was originally owned by my grandfather's voice teacher, with whom he traveled throughout the Midwest performing as a boy soprano. That teacher eventually moved in with my dad's family and lived with them until he died, leaving it to my grandfather, who eventually left it to me. Except I was a junior in high school and what was I going to do with a baby grand piano? So, it went to my aunt until I was 32 and finally had a house with a whole room just for the piano.
When my marriage ended I had to put it in climate-controlled storage for a year and a half. That's when it really became a stone around my neck, and even though I technically have the space for it now, the truth is I don't want it despite the family significance. No one in my household plays and it is a massive waste of a lovely instrument. So, y'know, if you wanna move a sweet baby grand from Western New York to the Hudson Valley we should talk...
Oh, wow! So you really know. Well, we are more in the market for a small upright. But you should sell it a free yourself from it!
And, of course, congratulations on the recognition for your essay. So happy for you!
Happy birthday! For me, each decade gets better, so throw yourself a big party for your 60th! I turn 65 later this month and need to figure out how to celebrate my birthday month.
The emotional attachment to things and the guilt attached to it (and the things) is real. It’s a major struggle for me. Thanks for your insight.
I can't love this post enough. Happy birthday! I turn 65 this month, making me not only a senior (and what is a senior, exactly?), but a card-carrying one. Fun fact: many of us can't wait to hit 65 due to insurance issues, and that wonderful new Medicare card that alleviates all manner of insurance woes. My memoir (There's a Clydesdale in the Attic: Reflections on Keeping and Letting Go) contains my stories similar to this one. We keep things for many reasons, summarized as memories and emotions. Or I should say, many of us do. But when we truly examine the actual objects of our affection, sometimes letting them go isn't hard. I toted homemade, 4-H prom dresses (don't judge, I'm a Midwestern farm girl from way back) around from residence to residence, basement to closet to attic ever since 1977. Why? Saving them for the daughters who would enjoy them for dress-up play. Ha! Never had daughters. So ditch them? Not me. I'll save them for the granddaughters. Still hoping for those to arrive, then realized if they ever show up, they wouldn't want these old things. I let them go to that great senior prom in the sky. It wasn't even hard. The freed space is its own reward. It allows room for something new, or just for ... free space, akin to white margins in a notebook. Soothing to the eye and a place for future dreams and projects to emerge. You and I come from two different "worlds," (I'm rural-rooted in Indiana) and you're so much younger (yes, you are), yet I love how I connect with many things you write, and I too, have a fascination with how we all "do" age.
Thank you, Donna! So glad this and my other pieces resonate with you and your own writing. PS I can’t wait to qualify for Medicare.
I was forced to move last year and had to seriously downsize for the second time. Found so much family history and artifacts as sole survivor. It was overwhelming and I got stuck in the middle of it.
Now, having ALL this stuff spread and piled in the tiny new space, I am finally just getting sick of it.
It took TIME for those emotionally laden objects to lose that aura and become just ‘stuff’. I lost some very valuable books and artifacts to water damage and there was a period of just hanging on to whatever had survived. Glad that has passed…
Sometimes we just have to go through the healing process before we can change our perspective.
Yes.
Ali, I do community programs called What We Keep. One attendee told me that her home sold immediately after listing it and she had to quickly move elsewhere. No time for gentle sorting! There were several containers of half-done projects that she felt guilty about never finishing, and no doubt had vague notions that one day she would finish them. But instead of taking them into her new space, she let them go. She explained that it was great to claim the space those projects claimed in her mind and in her home. She had a new home, new plans, and new projects and dreams to pursue. I thought it was a lovely thought pattern. Kudos to you on your journey. In the end, it all truly is just "stuff." Well said.
“Reclaim the space for new projects.” It can definitely be an either/or matter.
Oh the half finished projects!
That would make a very scary Halloween costume: HAUNTING!!!
I kept little ones that still interest me., like beads. We’re lucky in Seattle to have an art supply recycle store, Recreative, so any guilt is replaced with good dopamine blasts.
Wow, Sari, I did a double-take when I saw this picture because you look a lot like me circa 1971, and I think our pianos were twins. Just a couple of weeks ago, I wondered out loud to my mom what happened to that piano. It was in my parents' last house, but it's not in their apartment now. My mom, who's in the early stages of let's call it forgetting things, just shrugged, which is weird because she's the one who really played. I only took lessons and played badly. But when I realized I don't know where that piano ended up, I felt a little bit bad about it. I lived on the Upper East Side in the early 90s for graduate school, which sounds nicer than it was (York Avenue), but I never had to figure out how to put a piano in my shared railroad flat. I can assure you that my daughter's piano now sits entirely unplayed when she's away at college and that while I think (at 57 btw) of playing it somtimes, there is always a better way to spend my precious time! Anyway, really enjoyed this and enjoy your newsletter overall.
Thank you so much, Kathy! And funny about all the similarities, including our ages and the way we looked.
I love that you are a fellow LIBRA!!!! Happy Birthday. Always love reading your work.
Thanks, Dina! Always love knowing other Libras!
Happy happy birthday, Sari! Thanks so much for all you've given us. I've got TWO pianos in my house that I'm trying to cut loose but sentiment and practicality are at war. One is from my childhood, but the other one is a better instrument. I'll keep one, but which one? Sentiment is a clever fighter. Tbd.
Thank you, Lisa! I get your conundrum!
Happy Birthday!
it's a wonderful piece, sari—and how wonderful you got the news about the notable mention on your birthday! yes, that scary threshold is looming (don't i know it!) but you've done so much with oldster to open up the conversation about aging; it's helped me and i'm sure others to make it less daunting. so enjoy your day and HAPPY FIFTY FUCKING EIGHT!!!
Thank you so much for the birthday wishes, Chin-Sun, and for the kind words about Oldster!!! <3