Reply #7: I'm single and childless, but not by choice [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Yet I don't feel as if I'm on a downhill slide at age 54.

There's always interesting stuff to do and not enough years left to do it. There's always something to learn, new people to meet, places to go, work to do. I plan on being a feisty old lady.

And you never know. At Christmas of 1991, my then-70-year-old mother was moaning and groaning about how she was useless and her life was over. Two months later, she was reunited with an old flame, and they were married four months after that. Her husband is in poor health now, but before that, they went to Europe twice, associating with his friends opened up new worlds for her, and she converted him from a habitual Republican to a strong Democrat through the comments she made when they watched C-SPAN together.

"What a difference a day makes," as the song says.