On Being Seventy-Five*

Perhaps you can imagine my astonishment when less than two years ago I picked up the phone to be greeted by Susan Mulliken's cheery voice saying: “Esther, do you realize that in about a year and a half you will be seventy-five?” No, I hadn't realized it — in fact, I hadn't thought about it. Nevertheless, it was true; I couldn't deny it. Somehow it was an overwhelming thought. Those high numbers are intimidating. Seventy was a landmark, but it could still be accommodated. But seventy-five! “We'd like to arrange a celebration,” she said “probably a party and a Festschrift” (for those of you who didn't take your doctoral language exam in German, a Festschrift is a volume of writings in honor of someone — a kind of offering, in other words). “But we need your approval,” Susan went on to say. Of course, I approved; I felt flattered and honored, yet puzzled. How did I come to deserve this? I just went on being myself, doing what came naturally — hopefully with a minimum of injury to others — and getting older! It's only in childhood that getting older seems like a real achievement. “What a big girl you've gotten to be; how you've grown; you're almost as tall as I am,” say the proud elders. But the latter-year equivalents: “What big teeth you have, Grandma!,” or “Haven't you gained some weight since we last saw you, Mom?” are scarcely calculated to give one a feeling of accomplishment. Yet we all seem to take the Biblical three score years and ten very seriously and those who wrest more time from Fate are celebrated as if it were their own accomplishment, or as if they had some secret formula for long life. This is hardly the case, for whatever we do to prolong life — and of course there are ways: some medical, some related to life style, emotional and psychological — the