Long Ago the Beatles sang…Will you still love me/ When I’m 64?

Sounds young to deaf ears now, just days from 82.  What sounds even younger is the age that Mike and I were when we moved to the Northern Neck of Virginia in fall 2004.  I was 61 and he 59.

Then in 2010, a five-year-old Miata came into my life.  Now at twenty, it still runs with gusto: a sportscar capable of high speeds that requires me to be alert and shift its five gears. Great for my right hand and left foot. The Miata in British racing green looks much younger than it is. One early winter morning in the dark, I was on the way to play indoor tennis, when a turkey buzzard hit the right headlight and caused considerable damage to the car. I saw a blur of under-belly-white pass by the right side. How that buzzard could have remained in flight after a head-on still mystifies me. But thanks to new paint and body parts, the car looks great for its age.

Together, the two of us, as shown in this photo, are 102 years old. And the ‘hand-me-down’ jacket I wear is a size two my mother wore. Barbara Wilson died a month short of 98. She often said these words, before dementia set in: “I might be old, but I am not fat.” A small triumph Mother felt, in an increasingly larded nation.

I will think of my mother this Thursday when I turn 82. In thinking about her today, I re-read  A Woman’s Story. a 90 page book by Annie Ernaux.

This French writer won the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature. And Ernaux has written words that resonate with me: “I believe I am writing about my mother because it is my turn to bring her into the world.” On June 5th,  I will give thanks to Barbara F. Wilson for giving life to me in 1943, during the war years, when despair was a luxury the patriotic could not indulge.

Until next week, and an author I’ve long admired: Kazuo Ishiguro and The Buried Giant