As you know by now, I really enjoy talking to great old ladies. Here’s a story I wrote long ago. I’m sure Rebecca is no longer with us — but she was great while she was.

______________________________________________

There’s an old lady out in California that has some very interesting things to say.

It’s okay to call Rebecca Lattimer an old lady. She has just written a delightful book called “You’re Not Old Until you’re 90″–and she just had her 93rd birthday.

Rebecca does for aging what the Wright Brothers did for airplanes. She makes us look at things from a very different angle.

“I can honestly say I’d rather be an old lady than a young one,” she says. “I’m  serious when I say I’d rather be over 70 than under 50.”

Rebecca was a late bloomer — very late. It wasn’t until her husband had retired from a long career as a Foreign Service Officer that she began to ask if being the timid wife, raising the children and standing in the background, was all she was going to get out of life.

“I was over 60 before I had time to sit quietly and listen to that little voice inside asking,  ‘Isn’t there more to life than this?’” she smiles.  She’s been paying closer attention to that little voice for the past 30 years, and it has led her down some unusual and interesting paths.

Her thoughts and ideas explode like laughter-filled lightening.

“The worst thing about being 93 is being treated like you’re 93

“I’ve lived inside this body for so long I know it better than any doctor. If I don’t trust his advice, I just change doctors.

“I now think a lot more about the universe and my place in it than I do about worn furniture in my living room.”

To Rebecca, there are many nice things about growing old. “If you catch cold, you can just lie in bed comfortably, coughing and sneezing while you read a detective story. You don’t have to pull yourself together and spend a miserable day at the office.

“And you no longer have to worry about ‘suitable’ clothing,” says the lady who spends most of her days in comfortable faded blue jeans and worn white tennis shoes.

You get a good idea of what she has been reading during the past three decades as she regales you with her thoughts on authors named Huxley, Austin, Watts, Castaneda, Assagioli, Maslow, Pelletier and Thich Nhat Hahn. Her soft blue eyes glow as she discusses the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed and The Buddha.

“I think it is vital to keep your  mind open to new ideas,” she says. “Keep that marvelous childhood attitude of wonderment;  half believing and half disbelieving. It’s positively dangerous to hold to opinions we acquired 40 years ago.”

Rebecca, who grew up in suburban New Jersey, finished high school at 16, and was eager to head for college, like her older brother, when her father informed her that girls should not attend college, proclaiming “No man will marry a college-educated woman!”

“Okay for you,” responded an angry Rebecca. “If you won’t let me go to college, I’m going to smoke in front of you, and I’m going to get a job.”

She did both, winding up as a smoker on a small magazine in New York City. But she gave up the literary life when she met and married Fred Lattimer, a young diplomat who was just starting a career that would take his wife, and, eventually, two sons, to posts in El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Honduras, Panama and Turkey.

But the best part of Rebecca’s life didn’t even start until after Fred retired and became a college professor in New England. That’s when she quit smoking, began listening to that inner voice and jumped head-first into a new life. Her new lifestyle saw her meditating, focusing while standing on a chair, learning to relax every muscle not in  use,  disciplining herself by doing something difficult every day–and a hundred other new ways of looking at life.

“I get a lot of strange remarks from people who ask about my book,” she says. “Some think it contains wisdom, like ‘Munch a bunch of garlic every day,’ and ‘Always begin each meal with a glass of warm water.’ Ridiculous. It isn’t a book about growing old — it’s just about growing!”

Rebecca claims our bodies have memories.’”My thumb remembers the pleasure of being sucked when I was a child. My toe remembers the pain of being broken. And her wrist still remembers a special night in  Helsinki, Finland, when a strange man asked her to dance. “In those days it was permissible for a gentleman to kiss that back of a lady’s hand when they met, or after a dance,” she says. “I can’t recall the face of the man  who danced with me  at that party — but my wrist remembers that he turned my hand over and tenderly kissed the inside of my wrist.”

Although Rebecca is usually found standing behind a wide smile, basking in the glow of her new celebrity as an author she has also known sadness.

Shortly after she and Fred celebrated their 69th anniversary, he suffered a series of strokes and began to decline. Soon he couldn’t find the bathroom at night, and he began having fears that Nazi soldiers were coming into the house. They were both in their 90s, and Rebecca finally admitted that she needed help.

After weeks of searching, she located a pleasant care facility that seemed to be what she wanted for him. She drove him to the location, not far from ther home, and she introduced him to the owner.

“He was very nice to Fred,” Rebecca says. “He invited Fred to look through the the house and meet the other people who were living there. Fred enjoyed the visit very much, and when we got home I asked him what he thought of it. He said it was delightful. I asked if he’d like to live there.

Fred’s smile suddenly disappeared. “Live there? Of course not. I live here.”

“But could you live there if you had to?”

“This is my home,” Fred insisted. “Why would you ask such a question?”

She took his hands in hers and looked into the eyes of the man she had loved for 70 years. “Honey, I’m tired,” she whispered. “So very tired.”

Fred studied her hearftbroken face for a long time, and then nodded. He understood.

“Because I can still drive I was able to visit with Fred every day after he moved to the house,” she says. “He settled in happily, and was soon helping people there the way he had always helped people around the world.”

They chatted about her book, and talked about her upcoming overnight trip to speak to a large group of book buyers in a city a 100 miles away.  “He was as excited as I was, “  she recalls.

It was a very nervous Rebecca Lattimer who faced  nearly 300 visitors at a library on the night of April 22 — but within a few brief minutes she had the crowd laughing and asking questions. After the speech she signed books for more than an hour.

“It was a wonderful event. I should have been very happy. But I didn’t sleep a wink. I was worried and restless all night long.”

Early the next morning Rebecca received a phone call informing her that her Fred had passed away in his sleep during the night.

“Now there are times when I could just sit and cry and never stop,” she says. “But I have to keep looking forward. Life is a blessing to be enjoyed. I always tell people in my situation that you mustn’t live in the past. You must keep going. Keep moving,  go for a walk,  volunteer,  make a phone call, head for the library. Live.”

When  asked about her views on  her own  death, she flashes that wonderful, warm smile. “I still get a thrill out of feeling my 93-year-old heart pumping away — but when the time comes I will launch myself into death like a bird taking flight to home.”

——————————————–FIGHT FORTH—————————————–