The beloved author of Forever Fifty and Suddenly Sixty tackles the ins and outs of becoming a septuagenarian with wry good humor. Fans of Viorstâs funny, touching, and wise decades poems will love these verses filled with witty advice and reflections on marriage, milestones, and middle-aged children.
Viorst explores, among the many other issues of this stage of life, the state of our sex lives and teeth, how we can stay married though thermostatically incompatible, and the joys of grandparenthood and shopping. Readers will nod with rueful recognition when she asks, âAm I required to think of myself as a basically shallow woman because I feel better when my hair looks good?,â when she presses a few helpful suggestions on her kids because âthey may be middle aged, but theyâre still my children,â and when she graciouslyâbut not too graciouslyâselects her husbandâs next mate in a poem deliciously subtitled âIf I Should Die Before I Wake, Hereâs the Wife You Next Should Take.â Though Viorst acknowledges she is definitely not a good sport about the fact that she is mortal, her poems are full of the pleasures of life right now, helping us come to terms with the passage of time, encouraging us to keep trying to fix the world, and inviting us to consider âdrinking wine, making love, laughing hard, caring hard, and learning a new trick or two as part of our job description at seventy.â
I'm Too Young to Be Seventy is a joy to read and makes a heartwarming gift for anyone who has reached or is soon to reach thatâitâs not so bad after allâseventh decade.