A Joke Is Necessary At This Time.

I'm Seventy-five Now. I Also Have The Peculiar Luck Of Having A Sister And Brother Who Are Fourteen And Sixteen Years Older Than Me. Their Health Is Not Good. It Couldn't Be At That Age. But Their Spirits Are. Both My Brother And My Sister Are An Example To Me.

In The Park I Met Other Women And I Started To Get Interested In Their Lives. I Developed A Lot Of Pressure To Talk About Women's Lives, And Children's Lives, Too. Children Interest Me Tremendously.

Sometimes, Walking With A Friend, I Forget The World.

When I Was About Twenty-one, I Published A Few Poems. Maybe I Wrote A Couple Of Stories Before, But I Really Began To Write Stories In My Mid-thirties. My Kids Were Still Little, And They Were In School And Day Care, And I Had Begun To Think A Lot About Wanting To Tell Some Stories And Not Being Able To Do It In Poetry.

In The End, Long Life Is The Reward, Strength, And Beauty.