When my first grandson was born nearly 16 years ago, I was busy with my work and my own life. His parents lived an hour away from my house, which made two hours travelling if I did the round trip on the same day.

I told my daughter early on that I would not be one of those grandmothers who were ready to be a babysitter at a moment’s notice. We would love to see the baby as often as we could but did not want to be pressed into regular service.

She is a very nice and responsive person and never did press us to sit, although she left him at our house on one or two occasions which was never a problem.

But oh dear, how very wrong I was.

Involved grandparents

Being a grandmother is like many other things in life – the more you put into it, the more you get out.

I didn’t have involved grandparents, so I had no example at first hand. I therefore had to learn this lesson the hard way.

When my second grandson was born over three years later, I still had the same view. But not so long afterwards, my daughter-in-law was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and not helping out was not an option.

We acquired a cot (crib), bedding, clothes, highchair and all the other accoutrements of having a baby in the house. And by necessity that grandson came to our house frequently, although other relatives and paid help were also called on.

Now, you won’t be surprised to learn that we soon discovered the absolute joy of having a baby around the house.

Plus the toddler he soon became. Not to mention the child who the toddler grew into. He is now 12.

My daughter-in-law’s treatment took a long time, but she slowly recovered (and is now fine). And in the process, we learned so much about ourselves and the nature of being grandparents.

Distant grandchildren

At the same time as I was doing all that childcare, I was compiling a book based on  about their lives. I was fascinated to learn about the different experiences of women as grannies and how they coped.

One of the sadder sets of stories were those of women who lived a long way from their grandchildren and could not see them often. They felt they missed out the chance to get to know them well.

It happens so often these days, because everyone is on the move for work or other reasons. Young people move across the country, or they move to a new continent. It is great on many counts, but not completely.

Inevitably, these women were much less close to their grandchildren. They talked about the complexities of visiting from time to time. They said that seeing grandchildren on Skype was not remotely the same.

They certainly found it difficult to be so distant from their grandchildren.

And I began to understand how lucky people are when they live in the same place. You can play with the grandchildren on the floor when they are small. You can talk to them. You can listen to them.

And you gain so much.

My distant grandchildren

And then it happened to me.

Grandson number one, although living in the same city (London) had remained an hour’s travel away. We saw him when we could, at his house or ours, but visits became less frequent as my daughter went back to work and he went to nursery and then school.

And when he was not at school, he was busy with friends and afterschool activities, like swimming and running. And he didn’t like talking on the phone. And Covid restrictions didn’t help.

He was, in effect, a distant grandchild, albeit not so very distant by location.

Meanwhile, grandson number two moved out of the country with his family  and I learned about long-distance relationships.

The first time I had arranged a zoom call, he had to stop playing with his friends to come in to talk to granny. Not surprisingly, he was not very responsive. He had other things on his mind.

After that, I arranged such calls with him at the last minute, so he was in the right frame of mind.

But talking on zoom is not the same as sitting with a child, hugging him and feeling his presence. It lacks all the joy of touch. It is better than nothing but very frustrating.

I, too, felt I was missing out on the day-to-day changes in his life.

Advice

I rarely give people advice, because I think people are different and need to make their own choices.

But I do advise not following my example. If you have grandchildren, do your best to get to see them as often as possible. Talk to them, listen to them, joke with them. You will gain so much.

Because you never know when it will come to an end.

And you will never regret it.

A version of this article was published on SixtyandMe.com

A lot of people, so I am told, feel that a happy long marriage is simply not possible.

Yes, people fall in love and get married, but the initial excitement with each other wears off sooner or later. And then people just cope with each other and their annoying ways.

At best, neither spouse grumbles too often – and the husband puts out the trash.

Well, I beg to disagree. My husband and I are much, much happier after nearly 60 years together than when we began. And we have much more fun. I think it is so much easier when you’re older.

And I don’t think that we are alone – I note that a number of other people seem to feel the same way.

Survey of what makes for a good marriage

A month or so ago, a survey of married couples was published in some British newspapers which claimed to have discovered the recipe for a good marriage.

Commissioned by a hotel group, it argued that a good marriage was clearly helped by a twice-yearly short break together, as well as two longer holidays.

More interestingly, the happiest couples claimed to have sex five times a week, say “I love you” 20 times a fortnight and kiss two or three times a day.

Moreover, they had six meaningful conversations, three long walks together and two big rows every month.

The journalists had a field day. My newspaper invited four of their writers to comment on this survey. They were particularly amazed by the frequency of sex, with not a single one claiming to reach anywhere near that number.

Yes, it sounds a bit high.

But then, too, do the required number of rows. Why do you need to have major blow-ups so often in order to be happy?

Well, you must wonder at it all. Can this be true? How is everything defined?

I remain sceptical.

Views from my household

Roughly 20 years ago, two friends, both in my choir, had decided to get married, but not without the normal set of doubts.

The bride-to-be took me to one side during the tea break and, believing (correctly) that I was happily married, asked what made for a good marriage.

I was not expecting the question and hesitated. I then came up with a dull litany of the issues one needs to take carefully. They were all about avoiding the negative – being sensitive to the needs of the other person, minimising complaints and the like.

I went home and told my husband of our discussion and he burst out laughing. “No, no, no – It’s much simpler than that”, he exclaimed, “I just find you enormously interesting.”

Collapse of argument. Of course, this question should be answered in a positive way. I passed on his wise words to my friend, and she said, “Good. I find Dan very interesting.”

They are still married.

Early years of marriage

I would argue – against the crowd – that the hardest time to have a happy marriage is in the first few years. You have so much novelty to get used to, so many small changes to be made to your way of doing things.

Both of you. A lot of adjustments.

Yes, you have that initial passion to see you through, but it is not enough. And no one tells you how damn difficult it will be. There you are, having made a lifelong commitment, and it just isn’t what you expected. Very scary.

My situation was compounded by having married at the absurd age of 21. I thought I knew a lot about my new husband, but in retrospect it was so little. And I knew so little about myself.

I remember thinking one day that I should just burn my bridges and get a divorce. But that idea was quickly discarded because it would have proved my mother right.

I was darned if I was going to let that happen.

No, marriage is easier as it settles down, you learn more about each other and about yourselves.

You grow together into something better.

What is a happy marriage?

A happy marriage, for me, is a special kind of friendship. You can talk together about almost anything at some length. You learn from each other. Often.

You enjoy just sitting together doing nothing. Perhaps most of all, leaving aside the unsaid and obvious, you have frequent laughs together. After a while, you stop even questioning moving on. It feels completely right.

I would hate to be a marriage counsellor. All those grudges and recriminations placed oh so carefully in your lap every day!

I would be like the famous Irishman who, on being asked how to get to a particular difficult-to-find place, said, “I wouldn’t start from here.” My counselling advice would start much earlier in the relationship and would be pretty simple.

Keep talking to each other. Keep having sex. And find out what makes you both laugh (bowling? drinks with friends? Adolescent movies?) and do it now and often.

For heaven’s sake, have fun together.

Congratulations

I find that I am often congratulated on my long marriage, presumably on my ability to have been able to live with one person for so long.

I find the comment very strange. Why should anyone congratulate me on a life that is full of love and interest and fun?

My view is that marriage gets better and better. After a while, you know each other pretty darn well. You have had a lot of shared experiences. You have most likely lived through the incredible joys and challenges of children.

With luck, you have had a lot of laughs on the way. Somehow, there is no going back.

And why would you want to?

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was also published on SixtyandMe.com

“Everyone makes mistakes – and so do I,” sang the wonderful Big Bird in Sesame Street all those years ago. I still remember the tune of that song.

And the message is great. I was brought up to feel I shouldn’t make mistakes, I shouldn’t get things wrong. So I tried very hard not to.

Nonetheless, we do all get things wrong from time to time – and I certainly did. This is the story of a real doozy.

Becoming a film ‘extra’

Over 40 years ago, I received a general invitation to take part as an extra in a movie being filmed in London. An amusing idea, I thought, but not for me. I was busy with work, as well as looking after my seven-year-old daughter.

But my husband and daughter had other ideas. The minute I told them about it, they became very insistent: “You’ve got to do it.” I demurred. They pressed. They did not let up.

In the end, I went. My work was part-time and very flexible, so it was easy for me to take a few days off. My husband would get my daughter to school and back.

The film

The film, directed by Fred Zinnemann, was called Julia, starring Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards. It was about the American playwright, Lillian Hellman, and her attempt to smuggle cash into pre-war Germany at the request of her Jewish friend Julia.

Not that I knew much of that at the time.

We extras were used for several scenes, but my moment of glory took place in only one – a post opening night dinner at Sardi’s, the place that theatre people went on such occasions. It was famous for its cartoons of theatre people all over the walls.

(I was taken there years later by my parents, to see how it looked in real life. It was not very different from the film set. Having opened in 1921, it still exists one hundred years later.)

Being on set

We were all dressed in costumes of the period, plus a wig and make-up, so I looked nothing like my normal self (short hair and no make-up). I was amazed by the detailed trouble taken over people who would only be in the background.

I soon found that it was very boring most of the day. We spent a lot of time sitting around reading or chatting amongst ourselves. Some of the extras were regulars and I learned that we should hope that the filming went on for a long time, because we would then be paid overtime.

On set, it became more interesting. We were seated at tables with food in front of us and warned not to touch it. There was real shrimp cocktail, but they would not vouch for its freshness or safety.

When filming began, we had to look like we were in conversation, which was not difficult as we had been talking all day. But we could watch the actors surreptitiously, of course, as well as the director.

Watching a scene being filmed

When we were not on set, we were able to watch some of the filming.

I watched one scene, where Jane Fonda was talking to a young actress with the peculiar name of Meryl Streep. She was not especially pretty and seemed very awkward and uncomfortable in the role.

Indeed, I concluded that with her apparent lack of ability, lack of good looks and her odd name, she would not go far.

I even remember wanting to put an arm around her (she was ­only six years younger than me, but I felt motherly) and give her some sort of comfort.

I even wondered whether it would be appropriate to invite her home for dinner, but never acted on the thought.

Getting it very wrong

Oh dear. So much for my perspicacity. I did make a very large mis-judgment. Although I can add that I did read subsequently in some magazine interview that she said it was her first film and she definitely did feel uncomfortable.

I saw Julia, of course, when it came out – and on the television years later, when I could stop and rewind. There was no sign of me whatsoever – just a blur as the camera panned the restaurant while Jane Fonda made her grand entrance.

It was not a terrible film, but not a great one either and seems to have disappeared into the mists of time.

The beginning and end of my film career. But I don’t need to tell anyone that Meryl Streep went on to impress the world, including me, with her enormous sensitivity and skill as one of the foremost actresses of our time.

Perhaps one should cut a little slack to first films, first books and first everything else.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was also published on SixtyandMe.com

Something made me think about ambition recently. Did I feel it was a good or bad thing in people, especially my friends? The answer is complicated.

The pros

On initial thinking, I tended to feel that ambition, when not taken to extremes, is a good thing.

It doesn’t matter whether a person’s aim is to be the best composer of the age or to reach the top job of his or her company (or the country, for that matter).

It makes us work harder at what we do and put real thought into how to do It better.

Indeed, although I lack appropriate evidence, ambition of one kind or another is probably responsible for most forms of human progress.

We seek to get there, so we seek new solutions. We often find new problems as we do so and seek solutions for them. And so forth and so on.

Progress gets made.

The cons

But there are also unintended consequences of ambition. It drives us on, but it also drives us to neglect other aspects of our lives. Not in every case, but often.

Hence, the large number of unhappy wives – or, I hasten to add, husbands – and neglected children. Not to mention the good friends never made.

It is all well known. You have heard it all before.

Ambition also tends to drive us to want to be seen as successful.

Of course, there are people everywhere who quietly succeed in their endeavours without any need to blow their own trumpet. But that is not the most common pattern.

And this makes for a heightened emotional atmosphere much of the time.

It is not simply a quiet barbecue among friends – it is a chance for each successful person to let the others know about the triumphs in their lives. The same goes on at dinner parties or down at the pub. It is human nature to let others know.

Again, you have heard it all before.

As ambition comes to a natural end

But what happens when ambition dries up or simply comes to a natural end?

You composed that amazing symphony or made it to the top of the greasy pole. Perhaps there is another symphony to be written or another pole to climb.

But eventually, whether satisfied or not, you reach the point where you slow down or stop altogether. You look around and start to think about other things and other people.

And, alongside such changes, you probably become nicer.

Being nice

It was my mother who noticed it first, years ago. She and my father had moved into a new retirement home and, after a suitable interval, I asked what the other people were like.

She said old people tended to be very nice, especially men, because they no longer had so much ambition. I can’t remember whether she elaborated hugely on the comment, but it made me think.

Niceness is an under-rated virtue. The very word somehow implies something innocuous and uninteresting. We value it in our friends, of course, but it is rarely on the top of the attributes we commend in people.

We tend to note their talents or their achievements and niceness is seen as an add-on, something that comes along with other attributes.

But the older I get, the more I see the importance of this quality – it represents thoughtfulness, kindness and a willingness to go the extra mile.

It does not bring any kudos, but it makes the world a so much more agreeable place.

My parents’ retirement home was full of professional people. There were said to be 17 former doctors, including three or four brain surgeons.

There were former journalists, former teachers and, surprisingly, quite a few moderately successful artists. But the emphasis was on the word ‘former’.

Yes, some of the writers were still writing and some of the artists were still painting, but on the whole, they had moved on.

And in the course of doing so, they had become just ‘people’.

Once ambition is removed from a person’s thinking, the landscape changes. Other people are not some form of competition, but just someone with whom to complain about the terrible weather.

You share a beer or a glass of wine and talk about football or the book you are reading. Even when you talk about more contentious issues, such as politics, it is other people’s success or failure you are talking about.

It is a big change!

The joys of growing older

So, one of the real joys of growing older is the diminishing ambition of everyone you meet.

Yes, people still complain. Yes, people still talk about themselves, whether their own latest health crisis or their excitement over a new grandchild.

But it is so restful when the matter of status has been removed.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was also published on SixtyandMe.com

This article was first published on SixtyandMe.com

Three weeks or so ago, I had that old familiar bitter-sweet pang of regret. Not really serious – and it never lasts very long. Nor does it happen often. Perhaps once every six or eight years.

It’s not exactly real pain. Just a sense of melancholy. A thought of what might have been.

West Side Story

The trigger for this regret was our first trip to a movie in two years. And what a fabulous choice – the remake of West Side Story.

To avoid crowds, we went at 10.00 a.m. on a Monday morning before Christmas. We figured everybody would be busy with last minute work or shopping.

We were right. Only 10 people in the whole theatre. It felt safe.

And it is brilliant. I loved the original movie, especially the beginning where the apparently random lines slowly morph into New York City. No one who has lived in New York could watch that without a warm glow inside.

But this one surpassed that movie in almost every way. Both the singing and dancing were brilliant. So full of verve. So full of feeling.

And it used the City of New York with true originality. If I may offer one spoiler, it even went to the Cloisters, that completely improbable spot at the northern tip of Manhattan that seems to be straight out of medieval France.

We walked out in that spirit of excitement that a good movie can engender, especially one full of Leonard Bernstein’s music.

Plus, in my case, that pang of regret.

Dancing school

What few people know, even many of my friends, is that I once wanted to be a dancer.

My parents sent me to dancing school from the age of four until I was nine, when we moved from Washington, D.C to New York. I was taught to master the five ballet positions and much else about dancing that I have long forgotten.

Most of all, I learned to enjoy the feeling of movement in my body and the joy of working with a rhythm. Even as a child, it made me feel very alive.

I was well trained by the age of nine.

My lost career

Although I always loved ballet, I don’t think that is where my dreams took me.

As soon as I saw all those musicals developed in the 1950s, that is where my heart lay. The King and I, Oklahoma, South Pacific and even Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Many others. I had the records and knew the songs off by heart.

I belonged in them.

Unfortunately – or, in hindsight, fortunately – my life took another turn.

I never had dancing lessons again. I was so busy acclimatising to all the changes that a move at that age entails that I didn’t even ask about them for about six months. When I did, my mother said that the dancing teacher had told her my body was stiff and I could never be very good.

(Much later, I was told by a dancer friend that being stiff is something any devoted dancer can overcome with a bit of work. No reason to stop a career. But by then, it was way too late.)

I moved on, I was good at schoolwork and found many new interests. I did a degree, then another and eventually ended up with a PhD.

I spent my life using my brain – researching and writing. It has been a good life; I have loved what I did and still do.

I rarely stop and think about that lost dancing career. And when I do, I think of all the physical pain involved, all the difficult rehearsals and, if successful, the demands of travel which necessarily impinge drastically on family responsibilities.

And, like the little boy who wants to be a footballer, I need to remind myself that the probability of my ever making a success of such a career was very, very small. I would never have made it to the big screen.

The regret

Yes, the regret is extremely rare. It is a fantasy that I am much too practical to contemplate very often.

But once in a while, when I see a movie like West Side Story, I want to say, “Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be in there, dancing like there is no tomorrow.”

This was first published on SixtyandMe.com.

I like being old. At nearly 80, I think I am allowed to say so. Indeed, I like being old so much that I .

But that doesn’t mean that everything about being old is wonderful.

Far from it.

And one of the things I like least is the loss of friends.

Phone bills

Roughly 20 years ago, I was chatting to a very reflective female friend of my parents, living in the same retirement community and aged 96.

My father had just died, and I noted that I had run up a large phone bill talking to his friends about the event, as well as phoning home to talk to my family.

She said anyone should consider themselves lucky to have a high phone bill. At her time of life, her phone bills were very low, because she had so few friends left to talk to.

Interestingly, that small detail brought home the point very vividly.

Friends gone

Clearly, one of the very sad aspects of growing older is the slowly mounting deaths among friends.

Each and every loss diminishes our lives a little bit more. These may be old friends we have known from childhood or someone who we just met, but had connected with and held high hopes for a lasting friendship.

I guess it is just down to luck as to whether you have lost a lot of friends over your life or just a few. I have been relatively lucky in this respect, but nonetheless, they do add up.

What somehow surprises me is how many varying circumstances there are.

You might think a death is a death is a death.

But that is not how it is. Indeed, each one seems surprisingly different.

A death from AIDS

There is the death of my friend who had been living with AIDS since I met him, about whom I have written before. He was very young and that made it especially poignant.

He would sit in my kitchen and talk about all manner of things, but more than once he just looked at me and said, “It’s not so much to ask, I just want my life.”

And he was right. At 30, you should have a life to look forward to.

An old friend from college

Perhaps my greatest loss was of a friend from college, who I had known for over 50 years. We had seen each other through various early boyfriends, then marriage, then children and eventually grandchildren.

She was a very deep person, perhaps not surprisingly as she was a therapist, and rarely did ‘small talk’.

We once met for lunch when we had not seen each other for five years. I went to her office, she put on her coat and walking up the road, immediately launched into a discussion of her worries about one of her daughters.

None of the usual “how was your flight?” which I always find boring. Who cares about my flight!?

She died from lung cancer, having lived a long time in its wake.

The conductor of my choir

People often feel a sense of kinship with the conductor of their choir (or orchestra). You see them frequently for rehearsals – often over many years – and music brings its own intimacy.

I had been singing with his choir for roughly 25 years. And he had a wonderful twinkle in his eye.

In addition, the man had been very helpful to my son, and we had become friends. We socialised together with our respective spouses. I had helped him out when his wife died of cancer.

He had TB, contracted when, as a young man, he helped a homeless man find a shelter for the night. As such, he would have undoubtedly been a likely candidate for Covid-19.

But he was already going downhill in his mid-70s and increasingly needed help with his breathing. He died before Covid was on the horizon.

Much of the choir could not sing certain music without tears in their eyes.

A fellow writer

And there are the sudden unexpected deaths. I had a writer friend, to whom I wasn’t very close, but we enjoyed each other’s company.

He lived alone, had many friends and learned about a year or so ago that he had an inoperable brain tumour and would not live for more than a few weeks.

I can just envisage him wondering what to do. His solution – surprising at the time, but actually very sensitive and sensible – was to post a notice to this effect on his Facebook page.

He also said “thank you” to all his friends. This gave everyone an opportunity to write kind or thoughtful words to him while he was still alive, while I am sure his closest friends rallied around.

The loss of friends

One by one, they drop out of your life.

You want to tell them something, but they are not there to hear. Or you want their advice, but they are not there to give it.

I want them all back.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was first published on SixtyandMe.com

“It’s not fair!” – how often have we heard that from our children or grandchildren when they are playing a game or being punished or, indeed, at any number of other points in the day?

And they are right – life is very unfair. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I feel that luck plays a huge part in our lives. Possibly the largest part of all.

Luck in our health, luck in our genes – and even luck in our personality and character.

The view of children

Children are very quick to point out all the unfairness in life.

Their friend got a better computer for Christmas. Another friend’s mother lets him stay up late. Another friend never has to practise her violin. It goes on and on.

Sometimes, it is just where we are in life.

My daughter, age seven, and I were on our way to the Christmas concert that her piano teacher held every year for her pupils to play for their collective parents. “It’s not fair,” she argued in her nervousness, “the other children have been learning for much longer and of course they can play better.”

I did my best to reassure her that she would do fine. Which she did.

Years passed, and we were again on our way to exactly the same occasion, but she was now age 14. “It’s not fair…,” she exclaimed, with no memory of the previous occasion, “the young kids get to play easy songs with two fingers, and I have to play The Moonlight Sonata.”

Again, I tried to reassure her that she would do fine, which she did. But I must admit that I could not resist pointing out the earlier discussion and may have left her feeling she could not win.

And, from her point of view, she was right. Life did not feel fair.

We do our best to discuss with our children how no, life isn’t fair, and we all need to learn to live with it. Or, on occasion, we try to explain why life is fair, to help them see the positive side.

Or we find some other words to move the conversation on. It’s not a discussion at which anyone really wins.

The view of adults

Adults are no different on this issue.

A young man will complain that one particular friend always gets the pretty girls, when he has no special qualities to attract them.

An older woman will feel slighted when a male colleague is promoted above her, although she is clearly more talented at the job.

There are, of course, numerous other circumstances on which I could draw. Sometimes, we are quick to find an explanation that assures us of our case.

The girls don’t really like that friend, but they like the fact he has a car. It is because the employer is prejudiced against women that he has promoted the man – or perhaps it is discrimination against older people.

We have many such explanations up our sleeves, sometimes correct ones.

Growing older

Growing older brings out so many inequities one by one, until you lose track of any sense of fairness. It is, I feel, a driving force of much of our lives.

Most visibly, there is good health. Some people seem to be born with a strong constitution and the ability to fight off whatever diseases afflict them.

Others fall at the first hurdle, dying young from unexpected cancer or other disease affecting young people. Or, indeed, they die horribly in a car accident, as did my younger sister not yet out of her 20s.

As we age, our bodies test us constantly and sometimes, the heart or a kidney or a lung or even an innocent-looking nerve gone rogue gets the upper hand. We are left unable to lead a full life or, perhaps, disabled by pain. This is clearly not fair.

But health is only the beginning. Where most people seek the warmth and happiness of marriage (or close partnership, the legalities are not important), this seems to elude some of us to the end.

And then there are the broken marriages. How much pain is represented in the statistics of divorce – the marriage ended due to a constantly roving eye or alcoholism or downright boredom.

It is total luck, in my view, that the hopes of some young brides come roughly true while others fall by the wayside because these contingencies could not remotely have been foreseen.

And then there are the children, and subsequent grandchildren, who get themselves born – or not. I did not know it beforehand – I thought naively that the interests and personalities of your children were roughly predictable.

How wrong could I have been? Some seem to come out of the womb ready to please, to fit in, to make a good life for themselves. Others make life difficult for everyone around them and, most of all, for themselves. It is certainly not fair, one way or the other.

Life’s rich tapestry is not rich in the same way for one and all. Most of us struggle along as best we can and feel pleased when something works out.

Our own efforts

Some like to think that any success was due to their own talent and hard work. And they may be right. “The harder I work, the more luck I have,” you hear people say.

But having those very skills – the talent, resourcefulness and perseverance that helped them work hard – must be seen as luck in the first place. They might have been born differently.

The same is true for health. Some will declare that their own good health is down to the fact that they always ate healthy food, never smoked and took lots of exercise.

You can readily agree. But perhaps you should also question what qualities such people had deep within them that provided the disposition to pursue that course. It still comes back to luck, in my view.

What can we do?

We can have good luck or bad or, for that matter, in-between. Basically, life is just unfair.

There is little more that can be said. I can only offer the phrase that French parents seem to offer their children, when asked a difficult question – “C’est comme ça”, they say (that’s the way it is).

I always thought that is not much of an explanation of anything, but it will have to do.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was first published on SixtyandMe.com

This is on Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/24y7A5f) and is very pleasing because it is from a different point of view:

“This was an especially poignant read for me, as my grandmother passed away earlier this year. Through most of my adult life, I only contacted her occasionally, and of course I now regret that. However, I was blessed to have lived with her as a child and shared that part of my life with her. I am also glad I shared some of my artistic successes with her – she was an artist herself, and I wanted to ensure she knew that I continued that tradition and talent.

With that in mind, I went into reading this book girded for heartache, tears, and joy. I was not disappointed. The breadth of quotations is astounding and on point. Every person should read this book, whether they knew their grandparents at all or not, are grandparents themselves or not. It will have you in cathartic tears.”

For more information or to buy, go to my Amazon page

The Granny Who Stands on Her Head is not a book about being a granny, nor is it a book about yoga postures. It IS a book about being an older woman, liking that fact and enjoying life to the full, including doing headstands.  I wrote it and I am two months short of turning 80.

I decided to write this book because somewhere in the middle of my seventies, I realised that I liked being old.  Before that, I probably didn’t really think of myself as being old. Many of us don’t.

This made me stop and question why I liked being old.

There are plenty of things to be said against it and i write about them in the book. There is the failing health, the diminished energy and the frightful memory.

We need to think about giving up certain things, like a well-loved house or apartment that is too large, and driving as much as we used to – if at all.

Moreover, friends are dying and we begin to think about dying ourselves.

Yet the surprising thing about being old is how much continues as before. We continue to do most the things we always liked to do. This may be singing, as in my case, or it may be sewing or making pottery. If we cooked before, we cook now. And many of us have just as much sex as ever.

And the equivalent downside is that many of the things we have always disliked continue much as before as well.  I happen to have hated shopping all my life and I still do. I have worried much too much all my life and I still do. And I get particularly cranky when my computer is down.

BUT all this having been said, there are real plusses to becoming old. Many of us have the very real pleasures of grandchildren, who light up our lives. Our friendships – and often our marriages – are stronger than ever.

And most of all, being old means you have had a lot of experience of life and you know who you are – both your strengths and your weaknesses. You tend to have become comfortable in your own skin. As a result, you tend to feel much more free to do what you want – and not what you don’t want. How wonderful is that!

I hope that the title conjures up all these thoughts.  I am old, I am a granny, but I love yoga and I love standing on my head. It brings a freedom and it just feels good.

You will find The Granny Who Stands on Her Head as a paperback or an e-book on Amazon or other e-readers, such as Apple or Kobo.  It will make a wonderful present for any reflective older woman.