Hello, friends—
This is the first issue of my new Senior Chronicle, reflections on the art—and craft—of growing older. I’ll be sending it on the second Monday of the month, as one of the suite of newsletters here at Place & Thyme.
Let’s kick it off by getting acquainted, or reacquainted, if we’ve known one another for a while. We’ll start with me, since I’m sitting right here at the computer.
I’m in my 80s now, aiming at 84 at the turn of the year. A Capricorn Sun, Libra Moon, Sagittarius ascendant, if you’re into astrology. Nutshell: I grew up in Illinois farm country, graduated from a small rural high school, married (the first time) at 18, and birthed 3 babies in the next 3 years. At 19 (1959), I began writing for kids’ magazines—I was still a kid, what else was I going to write? At 23, I shifted gears and became the only freshman mom-with-children at the University of Illinois. I stuck it out to get a BA in English at Illinois and a PhD in Medieval Studies at Berkeley and spent the next 15 years on the faculties of California, Texas, and Louisiana universities.
But writing still lured and at 45, I left the university and took up where I’d left off: doing young adult work. Bill Albert and I married and moved to a scrappy patch of Texas Hill Country we call Meadow Knoll. (More about that and other life-stuff in Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place.) In 1992, I moved to adult mystery fiction, biographical fiction, nonfiction, and memoir, the publishing slots I’ve filled for the past three-plus decades.
Which brings us, more or less, to last week, when I finally finished Forget Me Never (China Bayles #29, to be published in May 2024) and sent it off to the copy editor. There was a plague of interruptions and that book took three times as long as it should have. But then, everything seems to be more complicated and take longer these days. Little stuff distracts me, and it’s hard to get back to what I’m doing. Short version, bottom line: I don’t feel like committing a year to another book-length fiction. Not sayin’ I won’t at some later time, just sayin’ I don’t now.
So here I am, in the middle of my eighty-fourth year, reassessing my assumptions about myself. I’ve been a novelist for 40 years. If I don’t write that next book, will I be just another little old lady with a cane? Is my identity completely embedded in my books? How else can I use my experience, my learning, my interests? Travel is pretty much off the table: my knees are fine but my spine has a notable C-curve and I walk painfully, with a cane. Anyway, I crisscrossed the country for years on book tour (that’s how I met many of you), and neither Bill nor I are lured by foreign junkets, especially considering the hassles of air travel for the mobility-impaired. We’re hunkered down here at MeadowKnoll with sort-of-a-plan for staying as long as we can. “Aging in place,” it’s called, aptly. But we live in the country, not in town. Help is hard to get. How long can we make this work? What do we do when it doesn’t?
I know from talks with friends that I’m not alone, puzzling over these “what’s next” questions. Lots of us are asking what we want to do, what we can do as we journey through the next decade or two or three, whatever’s left. How do we want to spend our time? What options are open to us, what options closed? We have so much to deal with—climate change, the political threats (don’t get me started!), economic uncertainty, health issues, addictions in our families and gun violence on our streets—how do we find a safe, sane path around all these land mines? My journal is full of these questions. Painfully short on answers, but I keep searching.
But here’s something. I haven’t met all of you in person, but I’m guessing that most (but not all!) of us are women. We’re used to sharing our experiences with friends—a habit facilitated by the internet during our recent national-trial-by-COVID. You and I are not growing older alone. We’re in this, as Substacker Joyce Vance likes to say, together.
And we can do that here on Substack—get together, that is. We’ve all heard of crowdsourcing. Well, we are a crowd, albeit a smallish one, and we’ve all been around the block a time or two. So why don’t we ask our questions and bounce our answers off one another? Test and reassess our assumptions here, together. Nobody can guarantee anything, and to tell the truth, I don’t have a clear idea about how this might work. I haven’t even learned how to use Substack’s chat space—that’s next on my to-do list, which is about a mile long right now.
But it’s worth a try, don’t you think? I hope you will stop for a moment and leave a comment so I can get a better idea of who’s reading these posts. What’s most on your mind this year? What issues are you wrestling with? What’s in your way? What pulls your ripcord, opens your parachute, sends you flying? Your thought may be just what somebody’s waiting to hear.
You never know.
See you on Friday, when I’ll be back with a little lagniappe: Senior Reads, a short list of books by a fascinating woman who is still writing her life at 80! Maybe she’ll turn out to be that advance scout we’re looking for. In the meantime, be sure to forward Place & Thyme to a friend or two (or four?) and invite them to join us. They can read about our community here.
Playing catch up and fascinated in these thoughts and comments. I find myself in a state of surprise when I consider my age…which I have been, so I thought, but not really deep down.
I am deeply comforted in and challenged by my faith. My goal to Love God and Love Others is constantly on my mind and asking Him to allow me the opportunity.
God be with us all as we search for opportunities and answers.
You will always be the age you were when I read your first China Bayles book. But isnt thst true of all our friends they never age in our minds. They will alway be the age they were when we first met. I have read all 28 plus some of your other books. I am of the boomer generation and wondering what is next. I have been a widow for 16 years and discovered I am perfectly happy being single. Dating isn't worth the effort. The Senior Chronicle speaks to me in ways that make life a little more clear. Getting older is not for sissies. Life sometimes is so much sweeter at 70 than it was at 30.