Your free ticket to my solo show
That I haven't yet written
I declare, right now, the I will live my dream in this my 80th year. I will take the stage, and tell these stories, owned and honed, in a show called Aging Gracelessly.
You are invited. My paid subscribers get in free.
I want to be her when I grow up
Ever since seeing Lily Tomlin on stage in The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe, I wanted to create that same magic.
Part of Coming of Aging is giving dreams delayed one more chance to be lived.
Some, like being a mother, will not happen, but this one, being Lily, alone on a stage, spinning stories, embodying characters… that’s still available … if I commit...and work on it.
Tell true stories
When I started this blog, my only desire was to write my way through the shock of turning, finally, from the middle to the end of life. I got my first whiff of death out there. I’d almost died of cancer in 2004, but somehow that didn’t count.
I had no idea what I was in for, I just knew that I knew nothing, and imagined the worst, like a terrible shriveling of what and who I think of as me.
I have told you the truth as it’s surfaced. Not all of it yet, but will I ever know what all of it is?
The Show!
Below are the top 10 posts, according to your likes and comments. They provide the scaffolding of my first drafts.
Most of them are stories and poems rather than analysis or critique
In most of them I am vulnerable, sometimes the fall guy
Some of them are funny
Some of them are reflective
Most of them are about relationships, long gone and current
A few relate coming of aging to the long arc of history
Together they intimate that growing old may be what everything else was for.
I can weave these stories and themes into something touching, truthful, funny, poetic, revelatory, and ultimately triumphant - the stuff of all good stories. Right?
I'll be there, just let us know where/when!
Wow, Vicki, what a courageous thing to do! I admire you so much.