On Turning Sixty-Five: Notes from the Field

About this book

"Personally Ive got a lot invested in reaching my stunning current age and Im damned if Im going to hang on to that youthful crap. (I liked the idea of being a sixty-year-old so much I started claiming that age before I turned fifty-nine.) Parts of it I dont like--the loss of energy that seems its inevitable accompaniment for example--but when I consider how I used to boil that energy away as a younger man and the things I boiled it away on I am happy to accept a shorter tether and a more reflective way of going at things." John Jerome author of such beloved books as Truck and Stone Work entered his sixty-fifth year with a number of goals in mind: to battle the debilities of age to master them through understanding when he could not physically defeat them and to keep a journal of these efforts. As he puts it "It was time to start planning an endgame." The result is a warm compassionate and honest look at the twelve months that led him to the gateway of old age--a survey of this time of life which ranges from strict physiology to expansive philosophy from delicate neurosurgery to rough weather on a Canadian canoeing trip from the despair and isolation of illness to the love and comfort of a sound marriage. The writing in its clarity grace and humor matches its authors spirit. "The quality of our lives depends on the quality of our time " Jerome reminds us. Reading this wise and funny chronicle of one mans--and everymans--journey toward citizenship senior division will be time well spent for young and old alike. It is that rare kind of book which comes to life as a companion and even a friend.