Cronette on the Road

So. The season for visiting schools is coming to an end: an appropriate time to be coming home to read Jan Greenburg's artful notes on aging. Grateful and thrilled I continue to be, getting to gallivant around the country, talking to kids about the virtues of studying history ["Any nation is a COMBI-nation of all of the stories of all of the people who've lived in the land down the years..."] and answering their questions. How old am I? 57 Never before been so old in my entire life. My favorite book? Different ones for different reasons. GEORGE WASHINGTON because I'm a sissypants who's too often given up too easily so I admire someone who persevered no matter what. GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL WAR because it was the most difficult and "No, it's not some Casper-deal that's going to rot your brain & give you nightmares. It's more like old Scrooge seeing the 'shades' of the departed going about their business back in the living past."

Man oh man oh man, drawing pictures for kids, making them laugh, meeting librarians and classroom teachers, rattling off factoids, reinforcing those teachers' messages - this is the best part of my job. But golly, the falling into hotel beds at the end of the day, pooped flat. Being shamed by the computer savvy of 3rd graders. I reckon that I'm not exactly a crone yet - maybe a cronette. An analog cronette in a digital world. Still, on a cloudy day, or when I find myself using terms such as 'reckon,' I can see my old coot self limping down the road.

It seems that reinventing, re-imagining one's mode of working is becoming less optional & dreamy as I cast about for new ways of telling old stories. (But that's the cool thing about biography: People never get sick of reading about people, right?) As editors scramble for the perfect project with which money can be seduced from the puckered pockets of the people. (Still, life and recessions are short. Art is long, right? Right.) As one's mortality becomes less and less a fairy tale. (Yup.)

It's all pretty galvanizing, come to think of it. Only a sissypants would be lollygagging when the great work of one's life remains to be done. Think of all we've done, preparing for it. Think what we need to know and set about learning it. Think what George Washington would do.