When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

I have a very fond memory of this book.

I used to drive from Texas to New Mexico every three months to visit my grandmother after my grandfather died, and did so until my grandmother's death. I helped her go through her mail (what's important, what was intentionally designed to deceptively look important), balance her checkbook, and sometimes try to get her to go to the doctor (she never would). To celebrate Christmas I would bring her a little table-top tree, a present for her, and a homemade pumpkin spice cake that she liked. When I'd leave the next day, she'd make me take the Christmas tree back home with me. And sometimes even the gift. She kept the cake. :)

Mostly, though, we talked and enjoyed each other's company. We talked about show more her life, her people back in Mississippi that I never met, about my life and my kids, about things we both loved (Art and New Mexico), and shared recounting the many of our favorite memories of times spent together since I was a little girl, her first grandchild.

I was always dreaming up ways to bring some little extra something when I visited, especially something she wouldn't make me take back home with me. I heard the title poem of this book on the radio somewhere (NPR?) and decided I had to share that with her. It was the exact kind of sentiment she had in her old age. But I knew she'd make me take the book back.

So I decided that instead of bringing a book, I would bring just the poem to her. Recite it to her. I asked my youngest daughter, who was about 10 at the time, to read it and record it on a cassette tape. I listened and rewound that tape over and over on the drive there, memorizing it.

When I arrived, I had it memorized. I gave it my best rendition. And, just as I predicted, she loved it.

I might even still have that cassette tape of my little girl reading it aloud in a stack of various "blank" cassette tapes that I have kept but no way to play any more.

Note to self: find a cassette tape player. show less

With a few exceptions, these vignettes of aging are from the viewpoint of young relatives of aging women. The title is a line from "Warning," a poem by Jenny Joseph. Joseph proposes that one of the benefits of aging is doing as one pleases, and what will please her is not just wearing purple, but spitting where she chooses and picking other people's flowers. My mother, herself at the age that Joseph yearns for, found this so offensive that she refused to look at any other part of the book. There are a few pieces that are particularly nice, including Sarah Barnhill's "Near Places, Far Places," in which a woman entering midlife begins to connect with her mother's values. The volume is riddled with the kind of typographical errors that show more would have easily yielded to a computer spellcheck, or even a cursory proofing (particularly irritating when this is a second edition). Though pleasing enough, I am of the opinion that the book is selling as well as it is on the strength of its titillating title—a testimony to the hunger for information of an aging population. show less

What a marvelous compelation! As I approach my later years (!), I find these poems and stories more and more appealing. They resound with humor and strength - just like I hope I do!

Such wonderful writings of the topic that scares quite a few of us, me included. I didn't wait to wear purple.

I bought this book for the title's poem -- which is one of my absolute all-time favorites. It has some interesting poetry and some nice images, but nothing earth-shattering.

A delightful collection of poetry and short stories on ageing, and appropriate for gift-giving to those who are seeing the second half of life~

When I gather with my women friends these days, we frequently discuss our ongoing struggles with our elderly mothers, the nursing home thing, the neediness and unreasonable behaviour, will we ever be like that? And so I read A Place for Mother by Joanne Seltzer. These stories and poems are truely timeless.