The Oldest We've Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transitions

By: Lavin, Maud

Book Overview

I had this idea of where I should be in middle age, an image that had been born in the 1950s when I'd been a child watching Lassie on TV. As outdated as it was, that blurred snapshot somewhere at the back of my mind actually did have a green lawn, a house, a picket fence, and two kids: a boy and a girl. In the corner, there was my husband in a suit coming home from work. And was that me at the front door in an apron? Did every woman my age have a similar snapshot in their mental scrapbook? In the decades since Lassie , maybe I'd managed to update the picture some. I'd erased the apron and added a home office instead. Still, there it was. And here I was, nowhere near it. In this engaging collection, editor Maud Lavin has enlisted seven talented writers to share their stories of midlife transitions, reflecting the unpredictable challenges and unexpected graces that characterize this multilayered stage of life. The writers--Kim Larsen, Calvin Forbes, Ellen McMahon, Allan deSouza, Peggy Shinner, William Davies King, and Maud Lavin together with Locke Bowman--offer a wide range of stories and experiences that are both universal and deeply personal in their details. From tales of divorce and dating through the lens of an eccentric collecting habit to the challenges of dealing with a close friend's grave illness, these memorable essays evoke a complex, honest, and often surprising picture of what it means to be middle-aged. The authors aim to share stories appreciating midlife, not as the problem child of self-help books (those many manuals that claim to have the answer to menopausal mood swings or abdominal fat or bone thinning), but as a wealth of events and perceptions and feelings never experienced before. This richly layered montage offers readers a chance to reflect on the gifts of this age and, finally, to savor the idea of being "the oldest we've ever been."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816526168
• ISBN13: 9780816526161
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

makes a lasting impression

Maud Lavin's highly original collection of essays about life and love at middle age is fresh and arresting. The way these people engage with the distinctive issues of living at a certain age will linger in the mind and heart long after you have closed the book on its final page. These pieces are engrossing for what they say, and worthy of admiration for how they say it.

Midlife Re-Examined

Most of us don't think about our middle years until we are actually there. By then we are looking back, taking stock of a life lived, while trying to distill life's lessons for the years ahead. This book provides a lens through which those who are in midlife as well as those who are heading there can share in the intimate stories of growth and reflection as told by a wonderfully diverse array of middle agers who have weathered a full range of life's experiences. A thoughtful collection of writings about a place and stage in life that we all (if we are lucky) inevitably get to. The Oldest We've Ever Been makes clear that it is indeed about the journey after all, not any final destination, age or otherwise.