Judith Viorst, NEARING NINETY
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[3:46]And let me know what you think. I had the privilege of interviewing the legendary author, Judith
[3:50]Viewerst, as part of the Women on the Move 3 part series from the Striker Center at Temple
[3:55]Emmanuel, which I just finished. This was the third Taffy Bredester actor, was the second. And
[4:00]Laura Zigman was the first, both of whom you should go listen to their podcasts as well.
[4:05]Judith Viewerst is basically who I want to be when I grow up. She has been writing for decades
[4:11]and just doesn't stop and is amazing. She wrote Alexander and the terrible horrible no good
[4:16]very bad day in 1972, which has held over two million copies. And of course, it's become a
[4:21]movie from Disney. Recently, she has also written many books for adults about each decade. Books
[4:28]from your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s up till now when she wrote nearing 90, which is a fantastic
[4:36]book of poems. She's written a bazillion books for kids. She's written a best-selling book
[4:42]for grown-ups called Necessary Losses and many other nonfiction psychology books, like grown-up
[4:48]marriage, imperfect control, nine books of poetry, like when did I stop being 20? And she was a
[4:54]former newspaper columnist and even wrote a musical called Love and Shrimp. She's hilarious and
[4:59]amazing. And I have to say, I did this interview and it was more of a conversation and towards
[5:05]the end of it, I actually choked up when we were talking about the legacy that she wanted to leave.
[5:10]There were 540 people at the webinar when I did this. And when I hung up, my mother was one of
[5:15]the people at the webinar. And she called me right after. And we both were on the phone and we cried
[5:21]because it was so moving. And just so poignant, not it wasn't sad. It was just, I don't know,
[5:27]really, really special. So I hope that you'll find it as special as I did. I think this is one of my
[5:31]favorite interviews slash conversations that I've ever done. So please enjoy.
[5:36]Hello. Hi, Tuna. It's nice to be connected with you. Not only have I like, I'm sure so many
[5:44]other people, a fan of Alexander and the terrible horrible, no good very bad day. And all of your
[5:49]amazing children's books. But having read at nearly 90, you are now one of my favorite people,
[5:55]I think, anywhere. This is the best book of problems, thoughts, reflections. I'm serious. This is
[6:05]like, I, if you could make a book to fall in love with another person as a friend, this is like the
[6:10]book. That's so sweet of you. Thank you. We are much too young to even understand the book. But
[6:16]I'm happy that you like. Oh, I feel like, well, you know what, that's one of the things that I
[6:21]think is great is that it's so universal. And the things that you talk about in the book are things
[6:27]that anybody at any age can relate to. Would you mind if I read like a snippet or two just to
[6:32]highlight what I mean? Is that okay? Sure. Okay. So this was one of my favorites. It's called
[6:38]Not Especially Spiritual. And for people who haven't seen nearing 90 yet, the whole book is illustrations
[6:46]and poem like little thoughts as if Alexander and and co had grown up. And this one is called Not
[6:53]Especially Spiritual. And by the way, Judy, you deal with things like death, aging, illness,
[7:00]friendship, all these, you know, marital strife, everything you deal with on the page is in a
[7:07]refreshing, unsensitive, humor way that just makes you look at things better. So anyway, here's
[7:14]my one of my favorites. When my oldest friend, Phyllis, was dying, I went to visit her,
[7:19]holding her hand as I sat by her hospice bed. Is there anything final I asked that we should be
[7:25]probably not she answered shaking her head. Why don't we just forget about final
[7:29]anything and count the number of guys we've slept with instead. So we laughed,
[7:33]sighed, cringed and counted our way up to how many none of your business. So we were done,
[7:38]not especially spiritual, but such fun. That's so great. True story. I went to visit my friend,
[7:44]Phyllis, when she was dying and actually I sort of gotten to bed with her so I could sort of
[7:50]give her a final hug. And then we decided that we didn't have any cosmic issues to discuss. So
[7:58]we went right for the deeply personal and a few laughs. Oh my gosh. Here's one more at the Japanese
[8:05]restaurant. And then I want to ask you actually this one's pretty funny too in a little shorter.
[8:09]So let me read this one called man mowing the grass. Maybe you haven't noticed that bear
[8:14]chested fellow that flat belly slim wasted fellow mowing the grass. The one with a black curly hair
[8:20]and the tattooed shoulder and the low-slung blue jeans lovingly molding his ass. He's bobbing
[8:25]his head to the music that streams through his earbuds. He's mouting the words to some
[8:30]seemingly sensual song. You think I'm out here on the porch just reading my novel? You are so wrong.
[8:36]It's just so funny. I mean these are great. They're like also it was it was addressed to a very
[8:44]specific idea. But you know when I think about some of the skills that come in handy as you get
[8:50]older or old, it is that all business of paying attention to the world that you're in right here
[8:58]and right now looking at what is in your life noticing. And then I wanted to add that even if you're
[9:06]pushing 90 your interested viewings are not limited to pussycats and rainbows and cute little babies.
[9:14]They could also be still at my age very interested in a guy mowing the grass.
[9:21]I think that there are all these preconceptions in our society and tell me what you think about this.
[9:27]That once you hit a certain age you're not interested in all those things like cute guys mowing
[9:33]the lawn or even sex which you talk about here with regard to your husband and all these things
[9:39]like weight worrying about your weight which I wouldn't talk about this passage too. And yet
[9:43]why does anyone think that just because a few years have passed that these issues have gone away
[9:48]or that they're not highly relevant. So what do you think about this sort of a most marginalization
[9:53]of women's needs and feelings and everything as as we all get older? Well I think there is
[10:00]the tendency to put people in categories,
[10:03]your young mommy, and you have certain qualities,
[10:06]your middle-aged person,
[10:07]you've got a middle-aged crisis.
[10:09]And when you're all forget about it.
[10:11]So I think it just simplifies viewing for people
[10:16]to categorize others and say,
[10:19]okay, got that one understood and nailed.
[10:21]Well, let's talk about, can we talk about eating?
[10:23]Cause this is like a topic I love to talk about,
[10:27]cause eating and sort of weight and all of that
[10:29]is something that really never sort of ends.
[10:32]And you wrote this one last one and I won't read anymore.
[10:35]So I won't give away any more of the book,
[10:36]but this poem is called, I don't know if you would
[10:38]have been called it a poem, about call it a poem.
[10:40]I should be over this by now.
[10:43]Though the state of the world,
[10:44]the well-being of my children
[10:45]and whether my husband and I are doing okay,
[10:48]determine how content I'm feeling on a given day,
[10:50]so I'm ashamed to admit does how much I weigh.
[10:54]I surely should be over this by now,
[10:56]considering that I'm a woman who holds decent values
[10:58]and matters like peace and justice and human rights.
[11:00]And therefore should not be obsessing
[11:02]over the utterly trivial fact that my thighs
[11:04]are straining against the seams of my tights,
[11:06]which they wouldn't, if I weighed what I wanted to weigh.
[11:09]I certainly should be over this by now,
[11:11]considering that I'm a woman of some substance,
[11:13]acquainted with symphonies, sonnets and Socrates,
[11:15]and therefore shouldn't be troubled
[11:17]by the inconsequential fact that my stomach tends to obscure
[11:20]a clear view of my knees, which it wouldn't,
[11:22]if I weighed what I wanted to weigh.
[11:24]I definitely should be over this by now,
[11:26]but I'm still denying myself
[11:27]the pleasures of eating.
[11:29]I'm still purring potions of yogurt and kale.
[11:31]I'm still a during chocolate, except when I'm cheating.
[11:34]I'm still buying every damn diet book that's for sale,
[11:37]and I'm still getting up post-racing every morning
[11:39]to read the days verdicts on my bathroom scale
[11:42]when I really should be over this by now.
[11:44]Okay, talk to me about this.
[11:45]Well, the sad fact is that I think I have had a poem
[11:50]about weight starting with my first book of poetry
[11:54]and going right on.
[11:55]It seemed to me that at a certain point,
[11:58]and I've talked about this with women friends.
[11:59]I'm not the only one.
[12:01]We say, well, when are we gonna throw in the towel?
[12:04]When are we just gonna stop worrying about our weight
[12:08]and whether we're dressed in a chic fashion?
[12:11]And then I was told about a Fred Devine's aunt,
[12:17]103, this aunt, every morning,
[12:21]every morning she got on the scale,
[12:24]and if she weighed more than 118, she went on a diet.
[12:28]She's 103, and I realized it never will end.
[12:32]It's not gonna end.
[12:34]So how do you deal with it?
[12:37]How do you, I mean, do you really,
[12:39]do you do things like that?
[12:40]Do you feel like there's a, should it come to an end?
[12:44]Should it, should women give up at some point
[12:46]and say whatever?
[12:48]Well, I don't want it to.
[12:49]I enjoy that being overweight.
[12:52]I enjoy buying pretty clothes.
[12:55]I put on eyeliner, even in this COVID quarantine
[13:00]that I'm living in.
[13:01]And even if I didn't have a cute husband living with me,
[13:04]I still put on eyeliner.
[13:05]So it's for myself, my sense of myself,
[13:08]the fun of dressing up.
[13:10]And as long as I'm interested in a few other things
[13:12]about the world that are a little larger in spirit
[13:14]than how much I weigh and what's a good eyeliner,
[13:18]I think I'm allowed that indulgence.
[13:21]I think eyeliner, I think eyeliner is a great thing.
[13:23]I mean, sometimes just dressing better
[13:26]and taking a shower and getting already,
[13:30]they can really affect your mood, I think.
[13:32]So I think that to think that a whole class of people,
[13:35]a whole group of women would give up,
[13:38]that it would affect their mood
[13:39]and it would affect an entire generation, I think.
[13:43]I agree, absolutely.
[13:45]Several years ago, I have a 96 year old grandmother
[13:48]who every time we're at dinner
[13:50]says, oh, I shouldn't eat that cake.
[13:51]I'm like, gaggy, just go for the cake.
[13:53]What are you waiting for?
[13:54]You know, why not?
[13:56]So I ended up doing this little survey
[13:57]of all the women in her nursing home to find out,
[14:01]like does this end?
[14:02]And you know, to your point, it doesn't.
[14:05]Most of the women were still weighing themselves every day,
[14:08]worrying about what they were eating.
[14:09]I couldn't believe it, so I don't know.
[14:11]I don't know what bigger message this is.
[14:13]Other than maybe if you can't get over your issues
[14:16]when you're younger, time alone will not solve them.
[14:20]I think that's probably a wise conclusion for someone.
[14:24]There is still some room for improvement.
[14:26]I still have these fantasies that someday
[14:29]I'll still speak French and play the piano.
[14:32]It's getting a little late for that,
[14:33]but I'm holding on to my fantasies.
[14:35]So you have been a prolific author for decades
[14:41]that you've documented in detail of how you feel about yourself
[14:45]in the world all the way through
[14:47]and you've written so many things
[14:49]that are just in the canon of children's books
[14:51]and everything else.
[14:52]How do you do it?
[14:54]How do you stay relevant?
[14:55]What is it about you that makes you see the world in this way
[14:59]and write about it in such a universal,
[15:03]sort of funny, bright way?
[15:05]Like how do you do it?
[15:07]What's the secret?
[15:09]Well, we stood out with the fact that I always,
[15:12]always wanted to be a writer.
[15:13]Other people wanted to be Shirley Temple
[15:15]or maybe Amelia Earhart.
[15:19]I only always wanted to be a writer
[15:21]and I started writing and sending out stuff
[15:24]when I was seven years old
[15:26]to my mother's women's magazines.
[15:29]Every poem had a dead body in it.
[15:32]My first poem was an O to my mother and father,
[15:35]alive and well and quite irritated.
[15:37]And then I went on to dead soldiers, dead dogs.
[15:40]I killed off an entire family.
[15:42]I realized it took me a while to realize that my belief
[15:45]that a poem wasn't a poem unless it had a corpse in it
[15:48]came from my mother's favorite poem often recited
[15:51]at a belly.
[15:52]You probably know in the set poker down by the sea
[15:55]the beautiful at a belly, dead at a very early age.
[15:59]And I always maintain and really not kidding
[16:03]when I say this, that I developed my sense of humor
[16:07]about how I looked at the world after I got married
[16:11]because there are so many options in marriage
[16:13]where the two choices are homicide or laughter
[16:17]in my as well way.
[16:21]You even, you said this in one of your poems
[16:23]from the 1930s that you know that you're in your 30s
[16:27]because when someone doesn't call you back
[16:29]and you think maybe they're dead
[16:31]or maybe they didn't call you back,
[16:32]you hope that they're dead.
[16:35]That was specifically my husband, I was referring to.
[16:38]I thought that if he was either having an affair
[16:41]or lying dead in the middle of the street,
[16:44]I would always hope he was dead.
[16:45]Wouldn't anybody?
[16:49]Wait, we'll go back.
[16:50]So you started writing when you were seven
[16:51]and sending things out.
[16:53]When did it become a career for you?
[16:55]How fast?
[16:56]And like very slowly, very slowly.
[17:01]I was quite a late bloomer.
[17:03]I came to New York hoping to get a job in publishing
[17:07]and then immediately afterwards they would discover,
[17:09]oh my God, they have this brilliant writer
[17:11]right on the premises, but I didn't know shorthand.
[17:15]I didn't really type very well.
[17:17]So my first job wound up being a model
[17:21]in the garment district.
[17:23]And we're not talking high fashion,
[17:24]we're talking the garment district
[17:26]where I model waterproof shantong dresses,
[17:30]their waterproofness demonstrated
[17:32]by people throwing water on me.
[17:35]It doesn't stain.
[17:37]I found a very humiliating to be a garment district model.
[17:40]So I used to show up with those hat boxes that models carried.
[17:44]And in my hat box was a copy of the brother's kara matzo,
[17:47]which I read between showings to demonstrate to the world
[17:51]that I was a far, far finer person.
[17:53]Then I got sick of having worth thrown at me
[17:55]and I learned shorthand and typing
[17:57]and went to work in the publishing business as a secretary.
[18:02]After a while, I got a job editing children's books,
[18:07]a friend of mine at one of the publishing houses I worked at,
[18:09]shoved me into a phone book and said,
[18:11]there's a job available now, call.
[18:14]Thank you, Priscilla Tucker, you've changed my life.
[18:16]And after the phone call and after the children's book
[18:21]editing for three years, I got married and moved to Washington DC
[18:25]where my husband worked for the Washington Post.
[18:29]Got a job editing science books
[18:32]because I was a editor.
[18:34]These things have a certain inevitability
[18:36]about them when you look forward, not when you're...
[18:39]And one day somebody who was supposed to write a book
[18:42]about the NASA space program couldn't do it
[18:45]and they asked me to do it.
[18:47]I went home sobbing to my husband and said,
[18:50]I wanted to write all my life and give me a chance
[18:53]to write a book and it's about space
[18:55]and I don't even know where space is.
[18:57]And spoken like a true journalist, he said, honey,
[19:01]say yes, we'll figure out where space is.
[19:04]And I did.
[19:05]And I mean, it was, and again,
[19:09]there's sort of an answerable story
[19:10]because I started writing science books
[19:14]and I was with a lot of hard work and determination.
[19:18]I had no skills in science at all or knowledge.
[19:23]I'm the only person I think in the history of my college,
[19:27]when my zoology class, I had to be issued a second frog
[19:31]or die section because I had sadly mutilated
[19:34]the first one.
[19:35]So I was not like your best science person.
[19:37]But because I was writing science books,
[19:40]the New York Herald Tribune,
[19:41]then a very good paper in New York
[19:44]was looking for a stringer to cover Washington society
[19:48]and they said, well, she writes,
[19:50]so they gave me that job.
[19:52]And because I had that job,
[19:55]I was in contact with people from the newspaper.
[20:00]One of whom was putting out a sample copy of New York magazine.
[20:06]They were putting out a sample copy of it.
[20:09]And so I had started writing these little funny poems.
[20:12]I sent them to this editor and he read them and all of a sudden I had a new life.
[20:19]They published 10 of my poems in New York magazine for the next decade or so.
[20:24]They made me their house poet and all of a sudden all my dreams
[20:30]had come true like a miracle.
[20:31]I mean I was beside myself.
[20:35]If I walked down the street and said I said what time it is.
[20:37]I said my poems had just gotten published in New York magazine.
[20:41]It was a life changer.
[20:44]Wow. And were your poems on a whole range of topics?
[20:47]Or did they address like the funniness of day-to-day life?
[20:51]Or what were those like?
[20:53]It was the funniness of day-to-day life.
[20:55]The poems were about a nice Jewish girl
[20:58]from the suburbs of New Jersey who had moved to Greenwich Village
[21:02]to live a life of wicked wild abandon
[21:05]with her mother calling her once a day to say don't.
[21:08]Whatever it is just being of doing darling, don't.
[21:12]And so I wrote about this poem between the swish to be the swinging girl
[21:17]and a very strong connection to my Jewish mother and father and my Jewish roots.
[21:24]I didn't get into as much trouble as I had hoped to.
[21:28]And then at what point in your career did you write Alexander?
[21:32]Well that was a, you know, I was still single.
[21:35]Milton came into my life by calling me at 1 o'clock in the morning
[21:39]as he was passing through New York.
[21:41]And he happened to be awake at Yelling Milton would say
[21:44]he happened to be awake at 1 o'clock in the morning.
[21:46]But nevertheless it worked.
[21:48]And I married him, moved to Washington DC
[21:53]where he was working for the post.
[21:55]And I had three children.
[21:56]Alexander was the youngest of my three children.
[21:59]And Alexander, Alexander had more bad days than most people.
[22:04]He, he's a very graceful athletic guy now.
[22:08]But as a little boy, I have to say it was something of a clutch.
[22:12]And he's the only person I knew who came limping home,
[22:15]limping home from school.
[22:17]I killed my knee, I killed my knee, and I said poor baby.
[22:21]Soccer, he said no, story time.
[22:23]He riddled so much during story time.
[22:26]He fell off his chair and got a knee injury.
[22:28]So he had more than his share of bad days.
[22:31]I wrote this book to Jeremiah.
[22:33]He was very annoyed.
[22:35]He thought I should have given it to Anthony as a bigger brother or
[22:39]me as a middle brother.
[22:40]And I was giving him the bad day.
[22:42]I offered to change the name to Stanley on the terrible horrible.
[22:46]But in my, one of my major mommy manipulation moves,
[22:51]I said it won't be a great big letters.
[22:54]The name Alexander won't be a great big letters on the,
[22:57]I wrote the book.
[22:57]So he said keep it Alexander.
[23:00]Wow.
[23:01]How did he feel about that now?
[23:03]I think he's quite pleased with it now.
[23:05]Yes.
[23:08]And then how did it feel so many years later having it made into a movie?
[23:14]Well, I, you know, I was, I was thrilled.
[23:17]I was, lots of people, lots and lots of people for decades trying to make it into a movie.
[23:24]And I think, I think Disney did a quite decent job.
[23:26]It's very different from my book in some ways.
[23:30]But it does have the spirit of the terrible horrible.
[23:32]It was our kids went to a doing of it.
[23:35]And they gave it an 8 out of 10, which I thought was pretty good for
[23:38]three very critical kids.
[23:42]And now do your grandchildren just read all of your books all the time?
[23:45]I mean, are they, do they recognize how special it is that you're their grandmother?
[23:49]I don't know if that's ever really possible.
[23:51]But I, you know, these grandmothers are of interest for, you know,
[23:56]what are we having for dinner tonight?
[23:58]Or let's, you know, let's go play with the dolls or let's build cardhouses.
[24:03]It's very hard to impress children and grand.
[24:08]I think they're pleased, but, you know, that's not who I am to them.
[24:12]So when Alexander came out, I know it has this long history, was it an instant bestseller?
[24:24]And what did it feel like then to have such a successful book?
[24:27]And we're, and then how did it affect all the other books that you ended up writing for kids?
[24:34]Well, actually Alexander was initially turned down.
[24:38]The publisher I have had for my first two children's books turned it down.
[24:43]And then somebody else took it and then, and then over time it turned into this very, very
[24:51]major success of a book.
[24:53]And my quite mature response to the publishers who turned it down or something like,
[25:00]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[25:02]I'm sure many authors can relate to that feeling of wanting to show the ones who rejected them.
[25:12]They're, you know, forthcoming success.
[25:15]And then what, how did you start writing these, how did you start writing these collections of
[25:20]poems? Because I know you have one for the last what 60 years or so. Tell me about that theory.
[25:25]Well, while I was writing my science books, I was also sort of looking around and writing about
[25:32]my life and thinking about how I had gotten from Maplewood, New Jersey to British Village,
[25:40]to marriage and was sitting amidst piles of unfold the laundry thinking about my life.
[25:47]And so I started just talking about the girl I had been before I got married.
[25:53]And then the woman I became as a result of marriage.
[25:57]And I started out, I mean, it's hard to be hip over 30.
[26:01]It's really about the collisions between expectation and reality.
[26:07]I mean, you think, you know, you're going to wear a filming pen war at the breakfast table and talk
[26:12]about, you know, major issues of the day.
[26:15]And, you know, you've got a screaming baby spit up on your filming pen war, which is probably a
[26:21]plant dirty bathrobe. And you know, and your conversations are more alike. What's a comfortable
[26:29]room temperature or what's a safe speed on the New Jersey turn pike? It's not these lofty issues.
[26:36]And after sort of siding over the drieriness of dailyness, you start moving a little
[26:43]slowly by slowly into the preciousness of dailyness while still reserving your right to
[26:50]bitch and moan about anything. Having chronicles all the different decades.
[26:56]What is like the core of each one if you if you had one like I'm in my 40s and 43 like
[27:03]do you remember like in that decade, like what is like the thing that distinguishes it?
[27:08]And I read like the little snippets from each of your bucks, but
[27:13]or what is the thing that changes the most over time or changes the least?
[27:17]Well, I think that I think there are different issues. I think the 30s one when married and
[27:22]children is dealing with the collision between expectation reality. I found my 40s. I'm sorry to say
[27:28]this to you. My very hardest decade. The 40s, I realized that there were doors that were going to
[27:35]be closed to me forever. You know, it wasn't like an open-ended road. There's no going to be a
[27:40]ballerina, tennis star, a TV star, the woman from home Paul Newman finally left Joanne.
[27:47]And that even if I never got on a plane for the rest of my life, I was going to die someday.
[27:52]And these were top truths to absorb. And the interesting thing was I used to go around giving
[27:59]talks and I would talk about the 40s and I would say what I just said to you. And every single
[28:05]time somebody from the audience would come up to me afterwards and she said, honey,
[28:10]wait till you get to your 50s. It gets so much better. So I pass that on to you.
[28:16]Interesting. And were the 50s better? Absolutely. The 50s are when you've done a certain amount
[28:24]of reaping for the things you're never going to be and never going to do. And you start focusing
[28:31]on what you're good at, what your abilities are, what makes you happy and feel confident and give
[28:38]something to the larger world. You're not a self-centered as you used to be. You're not a self-pitting
[28:44]as you used to be. You're not as dumb as you used to be. And it's a decade of really feeling your
[28:51]powers and taking note of what's gained instead of what's lost.
[28:57]Let's keep going. How about 60s?
[29:02]Just in the 50s, just when you think you've got an all-nail dad, okay, I'm together on this
[29:08]whole wonderful person, new stuff comes up. I mean all of a sudden you're a senior citizen,
[29:16]you're a grandmother, and you start thinking, is this it? Medicare payments,
[29:22]early bird special, certain discounts, because of your old age. And you start feeling as if the
[29:33]world is trying to make you an old person. And that's your struggle to say, no, I'm still going to,
[29:40]I'm still going to be me, I'm still going to find things that I care about and do.
[29:44]But senior citizen is what you get to be when you're 65. And you may not like that phrase.
[29:51]And you may feel yourself being defined by it more than you feel that soon you are.
[29:58]So the 60s is still a little bit.
[30:00]wrestling match. I have a problem and I've reached the stage where all my doctors are older
[30:05]than I am. I've reached the stage when I'm discussing wills more than a discussing
[30:13]proofs. A lot of the conversations alter, but yourself doesn't have to alter and you can strive
[30:21]to overcome the trap of senior citizen all over. How about 70s? We'll do 70s and 80s.
[30:34]Well, by that time, I think it starts sorting out who you specifically are and probably are going
[30:44]to be. And one of the things that I noticed, I noticed, you know, the women I knew were very,
[30:52]very busy women juggling children and careers. And those later, those later decades, everybody,
[31:00]every single woman I know. Of course, if they were all doing exercise, they were all doing
[31:06]exercise. But the other thing that they were doing, everybody was doing some kind of volunteer work.
[31:11]everybody, the rush of racing around, slowing down enough. They were able to give themselves
[31:20]the time to find work that engaged the larger world. To live an insular world, uninvested in the
[31:30]larger community, not just the community, but yourself. It's a broken world, it's a difficult world,
[31:37]it's a suffering world. And every single woman I know is trying to do something to make it a little
[31:44]better. And that is one of the sweet and quite admirable qualities of later life.
[31:51]And in your 90s, you talk about so many things. But one of the things you touch on is your feelings
[31:57]about mortality and how in this decade, you're still not thrilled about it, you said, but you have
[32:02]to you're confronting it far more regularly. What are your thoughts about not to sound morbid,
[32:09]but you've documented life, you're like the sherpa of the decades here, all of us Jewish girls
[32:16]through our lives and what's important. And now I can't believe, first of all, that you're
[32:22]at this age, you look so young. But I'll just go, I'll just take you on your word that you are this
[32:27]and what I'd like to answer that if I may by reading the last poem in the book, please,
[32:36]that's okay to me because it's called my legacy and it deals with these thoughts. Since it's
[32:43]looking as if my legacy isn't shaping up to be peace on earth and universal health care,
[32:50]here's what I'm hoping to be remembered for. Showing up when I say I'm showing up,
[32:56]sticking with what I started until it's done, sending Valentine's to all the children in our
[33:03]family until they reach the age of 21 and never ever leaving the house without eyeliner,
[33:10]playing a relentless game of Scrabble, keeping the secrets, I promise I would keep,
[33:17]being able to laugh about the bad things that happened to me, though not before I first
[33:22]whine and leap and rail against my fate and play my husband. Do we work, I'm able to be proud of,
[33:30]making a truly transcendent mozzable. Coming to terms with mortality, though, to be perfectly
[33:37]honest, I'm still not feeling all that thrilled about dying. Coming to terms with not feeling
[33:43]thrilled about dying. Watching over the people that I love, grateful for watching over me as well,
[33:51]enjoying whatever there is to enjoy, until that final time's up, closing bell, and hoping
[33:58]just a reminder that I'll be remembered. Those are my thoughts on what that was for you.
[34:04]So beautiful. I love that. I mean, you're so gifted. It's really nice to be able
[34:11]to hear it, to hear you say it. One other question I had was, I want to hear a little more,
[34:17]you write so much about your husband and your love for him still and how sometimes sitting at
[34:22]an Asian restaurant for dinner, it's just about the piece of being able to sit there and
[34:28]enjoy each other instead of the drama of younger romance and all of that and you write about how
[34:34]you really don't want to be a widow and you write about how your relationship has changed over
[34:40]time. So as someone sort of on the earlier side of marriage, can you give any advice about how
[34:47]you two have weathered the decades together? How long have you been married? Well, I've already
[34:53]gotten divorced. I'm divorced and remarried and I'm three years into my second marriage. So I guess
[34:59]I could use all the help I can get here. Good luck with it. Now Milton and I were both married before
[35:08]and we've had 60 years together and three children together and made every mistake and foolish
[35:16]choice and inability to resolve fights in a mature and intelligent way. But it's a work in progress
[35:23]and you will always be a work in progress. We've gotten better and better at it. And actually COVID-19
[35:31]a kind of an interesting test because here we are, here we are in the house together. We don't
[35:37]go anywhere except for walk around the neighborhood. And we find that the conversation we started
[35:43]enjoying with each other 60 years ago is still continuing that we still enjoy reading the papers
[35:52]and companionable silence and that a glass of his well-selected wine and a nice dinner by me
[36:00]is a lovely way to end the afternoon. And that we have many, many points of connection
[36:08]and we treasure and protect the marriage. We know that this is something of value and it's what
[36:16]I've called and some writings I've done. The third thing. It's not about him. It's not about me.
[36:21]It's about this marriage that we are creating together and that sometimes when we're losing
[36:27]a fighter giving in on some issue, it's not I lost that or I'm compromising as we're feeding the
[36:35]marriage. And I think that the marriage as a creation as something you make together is a very,
[36:42]very valuable way to think about what life is all about. Beautiful. And do you have advice also
[36:52]to aspiring authors? I mean, having a career like yours that has not waned it all. In fact,
[36:58]just gotten richer and deeper over the years is like a dream come true for many authors out there.
[37:05]What's your advice on that? And how often are you writing? Do you still write all the time?
[37:11]What does your writing life look like now? And what advice can you get?
[37:16]Well, I think that somebody once asked me a long time ago, she said, I want to be a writer
[37:25]so badly, but I hate rejection. What should I do? I said find another career. Because you're
[37:32]going to get a lot of rejection at every stage of writing and you've got to be able to tolerate it.
[37:40]I had when I went when my first book of poems came out, I submitted a second book of poems and
[37:48]it was turned down when my children's children's book came out and then Alexander was rejected.
[37:56]Necessary losses was rejected. It was a bestseller for two years, but it was initially
[38:03]rejected. And right now I just sent in something I thought was pretty cute about COVID and
[38:10]kids and that was rejected. So you have to always be able to stand the rejection. And for me,
[38:20]when people said, well, how did you keep writing? How did you keep doing this? For me, it was
[38:24]simply a matter of I did not know how not to write. I did not know how not to write. What I'm writing
[38:30]now is nothing for publication, but I am writing the world's largest collection of emails and
[38:38]having large email exchanges, this seems to be the way good friends are communicating these days
[38:44]as we cover politics, the meaning of life and eyeliner, everything. So I'm still writing,
[38:50]I think it's got much, much harder to be a published writer and I think you have to
[38:57]want to write, you better find some other means of financial support while you're trying to write.
[39:04]And if you need to write, you won't stop writing. That's great. That's excellent advice. And by the way,
[39:11]if it's a poem about kids and COVID, I started this new online magazine called We Found Time,
[39:17]only with the well authors who have been on my podcast, which now after this, you will have been
[39:22]as this will come out soon. So I'll publish it for you if you want. I'd love to.
[39:27]Great. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I know that there are so many questions that
[39:32]have already come in, so I don't want to monopolize you. Maybe Marjorie can help us.
[39:35]Yes. Hi, Marjorie. You asked wonderful, warm questions and such a generous spirit. I really
[39:42]appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[39:46]Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram
[39:52]at zippyowans and at moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list at zippyowans.com
[39:58]so you can always hear about it.
[40:00]The latest things I'm up to you.
[40:01]Thanks a lot.
[40:02]Today's episode has been sponsored by Stylist.
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[40:14]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
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[40:20]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[40:23]Thanks for listening.
[40:24]You can always email me at zibbyadzibiowans.com.