Occasionally, when I sit in the Adirondack chairs by the pond, I wonder if someday I will look down at my pants and shirt, my speckled arms and gnarled hands, and realize that I have finally become that woman I imagined I saw here one day long ago. Here is what I hope: I hope that woman does have grandchildren, and that they like to visit her, if only to see the snapping turtles in the pond or the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. I hope her husband is still alive, and most of her friends, and please God her children, because there are some things she truly cannot bear. I hope she writes as often as she cares to, and that there are still readers who resonate to her words. I hope she can walk with pleasure and ease to the end of the long drive and back to get the mail from the box, stroll through Central Park to the museum and home again. I hope she has a good life, with just enough company. I hope, after breathing and swearing and sweating and wailing through three natural births, that she manages to have a natural death, without hospital rooms and fluorescent lighting and beeping machines. From her bedroom in the city she can hear the hum of raucous life in the streets outside; from her bedroom in the country she can see a long stretch of lawn and the occasional deer grazing at daybreak. Either bed would be a fine place to die when the time arrives.
But that time is not yet. For now, either bed is a fine place from which to start the day: power walk, newspapers, friends on the phone, words on the page, dinner with Gerry, Quin, Chris, and Maria. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like, this growing older. I couldn’t have imagined it would be like this. And so I say, and pray, and think again: To be continued. It’s another day, and I’m off and running. See you.
ALSO BY ANNA QUINDLEN
FICTION
Every Last One
Rise and Shine
Blessings
One True Thing
Object Lessons
NONFICTION
Good Dog. Stay
Being Perfect
Loud and Clear
How Reading Changed My Life
Thinking Out Loud
Living Out Loud
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Happily Ever After
The Tree That Came to Stay
ANNA QUINDLEN is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self-help bestseller lists. Her book A Short Guide to a Happy Life has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at The New York Times, she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections, Living Out Loud and Thinking Out Loud. Her Newsweek columns were collected in Loud and Clear. She is the author of six novels, Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue, Blessings, Rise and Shine, and Every Last One.