But reading and watching TV, sitting in the audience, retired, all this is second-hand living. I am happy to be an armchair trailer and not have the hassle of packing, the dangers of crashes, the stress of travel, the nuisance of mosquitos, the cost of hotels and airfares. I do not wish to clim Everest, like Mallory who was man with a mission but missing for centuries, where my often absent husband liked to trek. Nor did I wish to continue clomping around ski slopes where my husband and son zoomed up in lifts and down on skis.
I am happy to retire to a quiet corner and console myself with the thought that I have survived most of the people I read about. I can still energise myself to get out of my chair and go for lunch, with the cheerful thought that Alice Herz-Sommer reached the grand age of 109, still entertaining others with her life story and piano playing, got through a concentration camp with her son and still has good friends from the bad old days and she seems to enjoy every minute of her life. You and I, with half the troubles she had seen, will be very happy if we can enjoy life half as much as she does.
Alice, alas, died in Feb 2014, aged 110. You can watch her playing the piano on YouTube.
I am happy to retire to a quiet corner and console myself with the thought that I have survived most of the people I read about. I can still energise myself to get out of my chair and go for lunch, with the cheerful thought that Alice Herz-Sommer reached the grand age of 109, still entertaining others with her life story and piano playing, got through a concentration camp with her son and still has good friends from the bad old days and she seems to enjoy every minute of her life. You and I, with half the troubles she had seen, will be very happy if we can enjoy life half as much as she does.
Alice, alas, died in Feb 2014, aged 110. You can watch her playing the piano on YouTube.
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