Older, but Wiser? Or, When Life Gives You Lemons, Freeze Them

Nicole Graev Lipson has written a lovely book. It has a lot in common with the book I’m working on right now.

Lipson’s “Mothers and Other Fictional Characters,” is a memoir in essays about a woman in her forties, struggling to have it all and make it all work — career, husband, children.

My book, is a memoir in essays about a woman, also in her forties, also hoping to have it all.

The voice in Lipson’s book speaks from the twenty-first century.

The voice in my book calls out to its readers from the late twentieth century.

Older, but Wiser? Or, When Life Gives You Lemons, Freeze Them

Lipson’s essays are long and leisurely.

Mine are a brisk 750 words, conceived to fit into a single, nineteen-pica newspaper column.

Lipson’s essays were published in book form three months ago, in March.

Mine were published once a week, from 1987 to 1992, as columns in the Oakland Tribune.

Lipson writes about in her vitro babies. She describes consenting wearily, night after night, to reading just one more bedtime story.  She confesses to lashing out in anger at a recalcitrant son. She admits to a private desire to get in the car and drive away from it all. And so do I.

I’m old now. Lipson is still in her middle years. Toward the end of her book, the forty-something Lipson draws a chuckle across the years from this eighty-something reader.

Nicole Graev Lipson’s Neighbor

The chuckle happens when Lipson describes spotting a neighbor working in her garden. The neighbor is a retired rabbi whose name is Barbara. (Barbara!)

Lipson feels respect, but more than just respect, for her neighbor. She imagines neighbor Barbara — and her older self — to be “some archetypal figure of my unconscious: the wise woman, the crone, the great mother” whose words might carry “the generous lucidity of truth.”

“People come to her for wisdom,” Lipson declares.

That’s when reader Barbara laughs out loud.

Forget it, Nicole. Our heads might be gray, and our skin wizened, but that doesn’t make us wise.

We can’t help you with the big stuff, like how to hold on to a marriage that’s gotten shaky, except to say, hold on.

We don’t know what to do with the obstinate 8-year-old or the fretful 5-year-old, except to say, do stuff with them.

What We Know for Sure

There’s only one thing we elders know for sure: we are dying.

We live alongside death, we old people. Parents die. And then a spouse and friend after friend. Another old friend lives in a memory care unit now, half here, half gone. I was there for his birthday celebration yesterday. I’m not sure he knew who I was.

We can’t give you bona fide wisdom, we old people. But we can give you some tips. I think they’re called life hacks these days. I’ve picked up a few good ones recently:

• When a neighbor comes by with a couple dozen lemons from her hyperactive lemon tree, have pity on her and take the lemons off her hands. I recommend slicing the lemons into sections, spreading them on a tray and freezing them. You’ll thank yourself the next time you buy fish and forget the lemon.
• Can’t get the lid off that jar? Take a heavy knife and slam the handle against the upper edge of the lid in a counter-clockwise direction. Two or three hits and the lid will oblige you.
• If you are a writer, or just an email sender, move the punchiest words in your sentence to the end of the sentence and your punchiest sentence to the end of the paragraph. You’ll sound like a pro.

That’s all I know for sure.

Except for one more thing: The closer you get to death, the closer you get to God. Death is right there next to you now, and so is God.

Thoughts on my first book, at “Help ‘Wrestling with God’ Find Its Readers.” More on books at, “Jon Krakauer — A Macho Writer Who Hooks Me in Every Time.”