My 35th book just came out, from Alien Buddha Press (the 5th book of mine that they’ve published!). The title is “A Lady of 80”, since it consists of poems written during my year before turning 80, as well as the first few months after I turned 80. Part I of the book is titled, “Passions and Accomplishments”. “Passions” includes math, classical piano, Scrabble, babies, writing and presenting at readings and conferences, thrift-shopping (and thrift-store fashion), some political poems about what is currently four days before the 2024 presidential election (including a poem about reconciling my outrage at the Supreme Court’s 2022 anti-abortion decrees and my own passions for having and nurturing babies (and children). (There’s also a long-ish poem titled “Miscellaneous Sex Memories”, which I hope my children don’t read, and which YOU’re welcome to read.)

Here’s a math-poem from Part I:

This Math Problem

I do not have to know whether there’s a God.

I do not have to know whether there’s a self.

But by George, I have to know

about these lines.

What way should they aim?

Or should they spin?

Where must they go?

What must they do?

Things do not have to be symmetric.

But things have got to be transitive.

Lines have got

to get you there.

And things have got

to be reflex.

Points have go

to get you here.

Part II of the book is titled “Senior Philosopher” — as opposed to the “Junior Philosopher” that I claimed to be as a young adolescent (ages 11 to 12 or 13). In that section I tackle “imposter syndrome” (and why I don’t have it), full time jobs, fond memories of ex’s, and aspects of Buddhism. There’s also a prose piece titled “My Grandson Transitions”.

There’s then the perhaps predictable Part IV, “Milestone Birthday”, in which I declare that I “deserve 80”, and get a “Real-life Marion-Appreciation Party”, courtesy of my daughter Marielle. (I also get “The One-week Post-Party Blues”.)

And the final Part IV, “Growing Old Together”, is… well, I’m lucky that I (still?) have someone to grow old WITH. And I’ll end this book description with the last poem in the book, also titled “Growing Old Together”:

There a kind of love, maybe just compassion, that we feel for old people, ANY old person. And when the we is the significant other of the old person, it IS love. It’s love added to the regular compassion I just mentioned. Also love added to the love we felt before.

Being an old person whose significant other is slightly older, and slightly less healthy, than me, I feel that new, doubled love. And I take care of him. When we walk together, I’m always on the lookout for steps for him to rest on. And when we take buses together, on the lookout for the ones that involve the least walking.

But I’m not a caregiver. I was a caregiver for my first husband. 16 years of paralysis from M.S., six of them not in a nursing home. That was caregiving, 24/7, of a ridiculous order.

This is not that. Besides, he takes care of me, too. Assuages my computer woes. Makes us breakfast every Saturday, that’s our tradition, and he knows how much I hate, after dinner, putting away the leftovers so even when it’s my turn to do dishes, he does the putting away. He’s also the photographer in the family, and the plumber-caller.

Yes, this is regular “growing old together”. When you grow old together, there’s a love you feel that you didn’t feel before you were old. And I like it.