I sat at the keyboard this morning, wearing my wonderfully ratty blue robe. I had just written, “What is fashionable can never be dear.” How true. Consider the lilies of the media and how they are clothed. In lies and deception and glittering perfection.

My child died with her old yellow blanket by her side. She had named it Mookie before she learned to talk; Mookie was a nonsense name. For years I carried a bit of Mookie in a locket that Bob had given me. At some point she became like a dream and I no longer needed outward evidence that she had walked among us.

What is fashionable can never be dear.

Ageism is rampant; that is why I have decided to cop to being seventy very soon. My hair is silver and I wear bifocals. The angels don’t give a crap how old I am.

These days I find myself wondering how to grow old gracefully. To shit with that. The way out is through. I imagine I will have my share of stiff necks, leaky bladder, hideous liver spots and everything else that accompanies old age. Like Leonard Cohen, I plan to keep the show on the road.

What is fashionable can never be dear.

Today I will wear something comfortable to the grocery. I will push my cart around, smiling at the beneficence of the store’s employees. I will insult Gerald, the senior citizen that works there and he will respond in kind (but kindly.) I will come home and feel satisfied that there is enough food in the house for a week.

I will perhaps weep a moment as I remember Bob, a man so unfashionable that he kept his marriage vows and kept from killing me at the same time. He gave me a see-through black nightie when the children were small. He enjoyed seeing me go up in smoke as they giggled when I opened it.

As he lay in his hospital bed, he recorded the story of how he saw me in fourth grade, fell in love and vowed to marry me. And so they lived sort of happily ever after, even though she turned out to be flat-chested and a bit of a nag. He had a tendency to stifle his emotions. As the old line goes, “I loved her so much sometimes it was all I could do not to tell her.”

What is fashionable can never be dear.