Personal History (117 page)

Fulfilling work, writing, keeping up with my old friends, adding new ones—these are the things I concentrate on now, as well as relating to my children and their families. My children remain remarkably close, even when they are having differences with each other or with me. I have not chronicled their adult lives so as not to intrude on their privacy, but I feel grateful to have been able to spend so much time with each of them.

Lally published two books and then became a newspaper-and-magazine journalist, writing a good deal for the
Los Angeles Times, New York
magazine, and
Parade
. The
Post
began regularly printing a column by her in 1991, and I take enormous pride in the quality of her writing and admire how hard she works at it. She has traveled the world and interviewed more leaders than I ever did. Her daughters, Katharine and Pamela, are well launched on their own professional careers.

My son Bill, after working as a lawyer at Williams and Connolly and at the Los Angeles public defender’s office, and teaching law at UCLA, started an investment partnership. As tough a critic as Warren has admired his approach and work, at which Bill has demonstrably succeeded. At the same time, he is one of the most devoted parents I know. Of all my children, it is Bill who most loves the Vineyard; he has built a house next door to mine there, which means that I am able to see him and his teenage children, Edward and Alice, regularly.

Steve has lived in New York City all his adult life, and after working for Mike Nichols and Lewis Allen in the theater, he became a producer of plays, producing works by Sam Shepard, Athol Fugard, E. R. Gurney, and other contemporary playwrights. He also founded the New York Theatre Workshop, a nonprofit group devoted to producing plays by little-known American writers. The workshop produced early plays by John Guare, among others, and staged the original production of
Rent
, a current Broadway hit and Tony-winner. Steve then became a doctoral candidate in English at Columbia University and is now publisher of the Ecco Press, one of America’s best literary presses. In 1996,
Rent
and a poet published by Ecco, Jorie Graham (formerly married to Billy), won Pulitzer Prizes, giving Steve two in a year when the
Post
had none. Steve’s wife, Cathy, an illustrator, is also involved in community work in New York.

I am lucky to have Don and Mary in Washington. They have brought up four children—Liza, Laura, Will, and Molly—who now range in age from twenty-four to fourteen. Mary gave up being a lawyer after practicing for some years and devotes herself to writing, being involved with the children, and her own community interests.

It is my family and the engrossing pleasures I’ve mentioned that help
me face the unavoidable problems of age and the inevitable loss of friends. I will be publishing this book when I am seventy-nine. I’ve been fortunate in life-style, in health, and in having so many interests, but old age is no barrel of laughs. Even if you are generally healthy, there are things—your heart (atrial fibrillation), your hips (arthritis), general slowing down mentally and physically—that make denial of aging an impossibility. People begin to take your arm, ask if you want an elevator, and generally treat you like a relic. Though they have nothing but the best and most solicitous of motives, it’s hard not to feel condescended to.

At the same time, there are positive aspects to being old. Worry, if not gone altogether, no longer haunts you in the middle of the night. And you are free—or freer—to turn down the things that bore you and spend time on matters and with people you enjoy.

I am grateful to be able to go on working and to like my new life so well that I don’t miss the old one. It’s dangerous when you are older to start living in the past. Now that it’s out of my system, I intend to live in the present, looking forward to the future.