"You make me feel so young"

Who would think that a publication called The Oldie could make a reader feel young? I suspect it has this astonishing effect on the writers as well. It is a magazine which glorifies life, in all its facets. I had read about it for a while online, been to the website, and thought, nah, not quite old enough yet. Well, I think sixty is definitely the proper age, so I bought myself a subscription for my birthday, and shall be a subscriber until I drift off into the never-never. There are articles about books and gardens and travel and daily life. There are cartoons. It isn't always politically correct, depending where you are politically, but that only makes me love it more. This magazine brings together some of the best writers in Britain, and they write as they are. Some are light-hearted, some acerbic, some nostalgic. But every single one of them is good. How often do you find that in any publication? Maybe in the golden days of The New Yorker, but I don't think since. If this is being old, I welcome it. And I feel welcomed into their company.

I think I've always been an 'oldie' at heart. I've always loved the dead. When people talk sarcastically about 'dead white guys' - well those are my guys (and gals). It's the old books I love. And I've always loved the past. I would sit and listen to the grownups talk about the old days for hours. In my grammy's and then my aunt's little house there was a register in the floor next to the bed where I slept when we visited. Lying there in the dark, among her doilies and old sewing machine, in my bed on the linoleum floor, I was lulled to sleep by the downstairs voices, rising and falling as they left the living room and went into the kitchen for an evening snack. While others my age went out to a party on New Year's Eve, I'd sit at home, eating Christmas cookies, watching Guy Lombardo with my parents. Yes, I was a homebody even then. When Tom came into my life, he joined my mother and me. I've always liked 'elderly' pursuits like gardening and bird-watching. I love anti-macassars, though I don't have any. I love brocade-like furniture which you see every time I post a photo of a book for a book report. I love this old house. But existing side-by-side with the old stuff is my love for the new: new music, technology, home improvements, some new books. So, old and young, all in one, much like my now-favorite magazine in the world, The Oldie.