Over the Hill, You Pick Up Speed: Reflections on Aging (For Anyone Who Happens To)

From the heartbreak of giving up one's driver's license to the joys of geriatric dating, Nardi Reeder Campion brings her distinctive mix of wit and candor to the subject of aging. The eighty-eight-year-old author approaches the challenges of growing older with imagination and an undimmed zest for life, from exercises that improve one's memory ("for me, memory is the thing I forget with") to creative solutions to being carless in rural America (she does not recommend hitchhiking).

Campion considers with amusement both the things that change (society's attitudes toward sex) and those that remain the same (her own inability to use the f-word). She shares her love of tea and travel, her pleasure in family and friends, and her ongoing frustration at her penchant for losing items large and small, worthless and precious. And she introduces us to some notable people she has met along the way whose influence she continues to feel.

Whether inviting her retirement home neighbors to watch a belly-dancer or taking a long-dreamed-of trip to Paris and Normandy at eighty-six, Campion shows that aging can be both funny and fun. If you or someone you know happens to be aging, this book is for you.

NARDI REEDER CAMPION is the author of Everyday Matters (UPNE, 2004) and of seven other books, including Bringing Up the Brass by Sergeant Marty Maher (the basis for the John Ford movie The Long Gray Line) and Mother Ann Lee, Morning Star of the Shakers (reissued by UPNE, 1990). She has written articles for the New York Times (including ten op-ed pieces), the Boston Globe, Reader's Digest, the Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, Yankee, and other publications. Her column "Everyday Matters" has appeared in the Valley News (NH) for twenty-five years.