Yesterday, on the 50^th anniversary of the publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, Goodreads offered a quote of hers: “Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

How appropriate to the way I was feeling, for I’d earlier read an email from a friend in Germany who wrote to me after reading Split at the Root. We were students at the language academy in Munich. While she embarked in a career as international interpreter for English, Spanish, French, German, I became an actress and fashion model. Different interests, different paths: we simply lost track of each other. Until now, 50 years later when my story reconnected us. Marina was not adopted into a different culture, but found aspects in my relationship with my German adoptive mother that resonated deeply with her own experience. Like most people, she loved her mother dearly, but it seems to have been a relationship that, just as in my case, and for her peace of mind, needed to be revised.

My friend still sounds as vibrant and youthful as I remember her, which got me thinking about aging, and where it resides. Where one feel it? My mother-in-law, who lived to be 104, said to me on her 102^nd birthday, that if it were not for the arthritis in her joints, she could get right up and dance the jig. “Well then, how old would you say you feel today?” I asked her. “Without the pain,” she reflected for a moment, “I could be thirty,” she added sheepishly, and we agreed that thirty was a good age.

I feel perennially 30. Particularly now as I enter yet another stage in my life. As a writer and publisher of my works, I intend to make it a vibrant one. Betty Friedan’s: Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength, ring just right. God willing, I remain healthy, as I embark on this new stage.

A friend of mine’s father, in his nineties said: “If I’d known I’d live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” I’m not leaving it up to chance: I’m back to my regular yoga practice and hike with M’penzi, my faithful basenji, for an hour every day in the wilderness. And I eat less, following the advice of an octogenarian who confided in me two decades ago: when you hit 60 reduce your intake by a third of what you ate when you were 50, and at 70 reduce another third. Stay slender.

What I have learned as I aged is the importance of minding what I say and engaging my brain before responding, especially when emotionally engaged. I love my many young facebook friends, who post insightful material and show me that the world, contrary to what I feel when I listen to the news, is in good hands. Youth is contagious, even in this day and age. And reconnecting with someone “In alter Frische” as one says in German. In English it must be something like: “reconnecting as chipper as long ago.”

Youth, old friendship, forever 30, and a new stage in life. Vamos! Super cool, indeed.