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existing state of things, as far as either are marred or mendable.’
    I know why I copy this out, and then sit looking at the sentences. Because so many of the letters I have received about End Zone in the past four weeks reproach me for my seeming ingratitude at ‘the existing state of things’ for me. And this is true in some of the reviews. Joan Dietz writes, in the Boston Globe , ‘Enjoyment of the present and anticipation of the future came hard for Grumbach,’ and Kay Haddaway in the Fort Worth Morning Star-Telegram , ‘I found myself growing impatient with Grumbach’s dark emphasis on the losses in her life.’
    There are other reprimands, in print and in correspondence, that I take seriously, and wonder: Was the mood of that time of my seventieth birthday, and so the first half of the book about it, undeservedly, unaccountably bleak? In the light of all that I still had at that age—successful children, a beloved companion, and many friends, a good house in a cherished place, relatively good health, a satisfying occupation from which I do not need to retire because in it I do not grow over-age in grade, as we used to say in the Navy—should I not be cheerful, grateful, optimistic?
    The only answer I can give, to myself and to the others who write to rebuke me for my ‘acerbic,’ ‘suspicious,’ ‘cranky,’ ‘bitter,’ ‘grim,’ ‘bleak,’ ‘flinty,’ ‘quirky,’ ‘crusty,’ and ‘grumpy’ self (this list of adjectives was culled from recent reviews of End Zone by Sybil when I could not bring myself to do it), is that sadly, unfortunately, I wrote as I felt. I would like it to have been different. I would have preferred to be, in Ruskin’s terms, happy in myself and contented with the existing state of things. I wanted to be honest, and so I wrote of my despair. As Walter Cronkite used to say when he signed off from the CBS Evening News: ‘And that’s the way it is.’
    At eight this morning I drove into Ellsworth to take the Maine driver’s test. My Subaru station wagon (so omnipresent that it is often called the State Car of Maine) is now registered here, and I vote and pay taxes in the town of Sedgwick. So it was time to change my license. Last night I studied the thick little manual, memorizing the strict laws about OUI (operating a car under the influence …) and all the fines for every kind of minor and major offense.
    I was third in line to have my written test corrected. I waited while a young man stalked out in fury because he had exceeded the limit of six errors. Then the girl ahead of me, aged about seventeen, I would guess, left in tears, having told the state trooper she had to have her license in order to get the job she had been offered.
    The trooper called me to his desk, looked at me carefully, accepted my sheet, and said, before he looked at it, ‘Don’t worry, ma’am. You’re allowed to take it over three times.’ I said nothing. He went down my list of answers, wrote o at the top, and said, ‘Okay, take this to the photographer in the next room.’ Ignobly, I could not resist asking him how many I had missed. ‘None,’ he said curtly, in what I took to be a tone of disappointment. Then he looked away and called across the room, ‘Next.’
    There are few triumphs for the elderly in this world. This was my small one for today. I came out feeling very flinty.
    Sallust (first-century-B.C. Roman historian): ‘All things which rise, fall, and also those which grow, grow older.’
    Mid-October: One of my required ‘appearances’ is in Duxbury, Massachusetts, at an authors’ breakfast. The host is Bob Hale, a chap who arranges such things for his bookstore. The place turns out to be a handsome old church and the audience is mainly white- and grey-haired ladies of a certain age. Oh, there are a few