By Reeve Lindbergh – Simon & Schuster, 2008
In this gentle memoir, Reeve Lindbergh offers a thoughtful and positive perspective on aging. Describing her life in rural Vermont, she reflects on turning 60. Her book is moving and often amusing, whether she’s describing birds that took over the trees in her yard or the benign brain tumor—she named it Alice—that she lived with for six months. The last chapter recounts what happened after the news broke in 2003 that her father, aviator Charles Lindbergh, had three secret families in Europe, and that she had half brothers and sisters she hadn’t known existed.
Lindbergh notes that when she was 12, she hoped she would never grow older. Now, as she enters the period that her mother, author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, called “the youth of old age,” she is gradually coming to terms with aging and has lost most of her fear of dying. This collection of reflective essays has appeal for all.
