Beloved writer Grace Paley, at the age of eighty, in a magnificent short piece titled “My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age,” originally written for the New Yorker in 2002 and included in Here and Somewhere Else: Stories and Poems by Grace Paley and Robert Nichols (public library) — a marvelous celebration of literature, love, and the love of literature by Paley and her husband, published a few months before she died at the age of eighty-five.

Paley writes:

My father had decided to teach me how to grow old…My father wanted to begin as soon as possible.

‘Please sit down, ‘he said. ‘Be patient. The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.’

‘That’s a metaphor, right?’

‘Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.;

‘Talk? What?’

‘Say anything but be respectful. Maybe say, Heart, little heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper also, Remember, remember.’

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