I was meeting a friend at a coffee shop and a song came on the radio that I hadn’t heard since I was in my late twenties. It reminded me of a time when I’d stay up all night long with friends, talking and drinking around bonfires. It was before children and spouses, and before everyone moved to wherever it is they went. It was a time when we had endless amounts of time.
So when I heard this song after so long, I remembered this time. And it hadn’t occurred to me until right then, twenty years later, standing in this coffee shop, that that time was over. And twenty years had passed.
It all happened so…gradually.
In this show, you’ll hear from women of all ages, from five to eighty-five. They talk about how they imagine their lives will be, how their lives are, and how their lives have been.
Welcome!
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Credits
I produced this program with my great friend Tamar Cole, who is a screenwriter, playwright and writing coach. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont
Many thanks to these great people for their time and their insights:
Mary Wesley
Lee Casagrande
Bess O’Brien
Mary Jacobsen
Leda Schubert
Marilyn Skoglund
Helen Rose Warshovsky (photographed above…)
Brenna Christianson
Aine Fannon
EPISODE MUSIC
| TRACK NAME | ARTIST |
| 3rd Planet | Modest Mouse |
| The Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Fugue #6 in D Minor | Angela Hewitt (Bach) |
| Six Marimbas | Steve Reich |
| Aria, Goldberg Variations BWV988 | Mia Chung (Bach) |
| Goldberg Variations, Variation 9_ Canone Alla Terza | Mia Chung (Bach) |
This one hit home, thank you. As a young person, I figured I had plenty of time to do the things I had imagined doing.
Then, twenty years pass and poof, nothing like I imagined! “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” I heard this line thirty years ago, fell in love with it, but didn’t really understand it until now. That’s the funny thing about life, no matter how much advice you’re given, you’ve got to live it to know it. Cheers to you, Erica, for
this one.
This was great! Thanks all
I did not want it to end 🙂
Thanks for the great work.
Absolutely wonderful. I loved the young girl’s ideas about how every age would be – would that it could all look so perfect from the inside!
this is wonderful, Erica you are a gift!
I loved that you finished this piece with a quote about comfortable pants and aging.
A link to this episode shall be my birthday gift to my friends in the coming year. Thank you. Will donate in 2016.
thanks erica – you certainly covered the life span, with your friends looking forward and backward. i especially love the story of the fifth graders walking each other home.
i then re-listened to my conversation with larry massett in “more poopy old people” and felt very much alive!
Thank you. This absolutely put a day of sunshine in my day. I don’t know that I have truly thought much into the future years of my life as it has streamed by until recently. Those first few decades seemed to be moving with such breakneck speed that pausing to reflect seemed challenging. Now, at 56,it is a bit easier. Interesting and complex.