Legendary author Judith Viorst, best known for Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, is still going strong at eighty-seven. She’s been acknowledging the passage of decades with books of poems since her thirties. I had enjoyed Suddenly Sixty and Other Shocks of Later Life and I’m Too Young to be Seventy.  So Viorst’s Unexpectedly Eighty and Other Adaptations was a welcome gift for my eightieth birthday in February.

In that book, Viorst waxes poetic about a past not unlike mine, reminding me of things no longer in my life such as garter belts, Saturday afternoon double features (which for me always included a box of Milk Duds) and reaching gourmet cook status just by producing home-made onion dip. Viorst celebrates her age with humor and insight.

Rumor has it that she has looked at our retirement community—having lived in Washington for decades, she has a lot of friends here. But she’s too busy writing to move—her next book of poems will celebrate her nineties.

I plan to read it.