"YOU don't know what it's like," my aunt said, staring hard at me across the dinner table. "That old man is about to run me out of my mind."

Of course, I knew whom she was talking about; her father and my grandfather, on my mother's side. I knew also that my grandmother was included in the "you don't know what it's like."

They were both old. At this time when it is a fetish to be young, when the most you can be is 29 (God forbid if you have had the misfortune to reach your 30th birthdate) and still be with it. They were so old that their true age isn't important; by all logical reckoning they were so ancient they should have been dead instead of alive, as they were, being several times over 30 and still alive, at least, not dead, as they decently could have been expected to be, since they definitely were not with it any longer. They were in what is generously referred to as their "golden years."