Sunday, July 25, 1993
I am more and more aware of how important the framework is, what holds life together in a workable whole as one enters real old age, as I am doing. A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without a steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.

I tell myself, this marvelous blue ocean morning, that it is not ridiculous that I feel put upon if the framework gets tampered with, if I am kept waiting a half hour by a visitor, for instance, because I am ready for a visit but then use up the necessary energy by trying to be patient.

Wednesday, October 6, 1993
Betty Friedan goes on being of great interest to me and a shot in the arm, to put it mildly. I feel better than I have in months after reading her new book The Fountain of Age. What she is after, which I am beginning to see, being less than halfway through this enormous tome, is to point out that all the tests of old people have been based on tests of young people and that what old people have as they grow old is something that cannot be measured by the usual tests. The questions are not right, because in old age we have a well of experience to draw on, and in some good way we have changed from the person at twenty-five who might have gotten high marks on a test just about information or doing a puzzle or something like that. We still turn to the old because they have something to give us, and what is so terrible about the present state of affairs in America is that the old are relegated to a place where they are simply a burden. We hear everyday that the young have to pay for the old. Well, the old paid for the young years ago. If we were willing to admit that old people have a lot to offer, then they would not be such a burden because they would be used. This is what we must hope and dream about.