Keeping Up The Appearance Of Having All

But It All Zipped By. One Minute Marlena And I Were Up To Our Eyeballs, And The Next Thing We Knew The Kids Were Borrowing The Car And Fleeing The Coop For College. And Now, Here I Am. In My Nineties And Alone.

When You Are Five, You Know Your Age Down To The Month. Even In Your Twenties, You Know How Old You Are. I'm Twenty-three You Say, Or Maybe Twenty-seven. But Then In Your Thirties, Something Strange Starts To Happen. It Is A Mere Hiccup At First, An Instant Of Hesitation. How Old Are You? Oh, I'm--you Start Confidently, But Then You Stop. You Were Going To Say Thirty-three, But You Are Not. You're Thirty-five. And Then You're Bothered, Because You Wonder If This Is The Beginning Of The End. It Is, Of Course, But It's Decades Before You Admit It.

I Tend Not To Think About The Reading Public At All, Or The Business, When I'm Writing.

Then I Lie Down On The Horse Blanket And Drift Into A Dream About Marlena That Will Probably Cost Me My Soul.

How Hard Can It Be To Find A Girl And An Elephant For Christ's Sake?