“My worst admission unless I admitted being a serial killer,” 84-year-old writer Doris Grumbach calls her confession about being a New York Yankees rooter. Speaking to a Boston audience she knows this addiction unlikely to win much favor. By way of easing the shock, she reveals that she has been a Yankee fan since age nine.

For fear this revelation may seem frivolous, the speaker emphasizes the importance of having passionate interests in old age. Baseball is one of hers. She knows the game intimately – batting averages, personalities, potential of players still unproven. To her Derek Jeter is a household name, along with all the other Red Sox slayers on her favorite team.

When she talks about how best to grow old, Doris Grumbach has clear convictions. Ever the imaginative writer, she uses the metaphor of a house. “I have to live in a different house in my old age,” she says, “and it has to be furnished, and what I have stored up there will serve me well.”

Some of what she has furnished the house with is spiritual activity: “I practice meditation, read the Psalms, I think a lot about Him or Her. I am in search of God.”

In fact, “life for me now is mainly interior,” she tells her audience, most of whom are people of mature years. “The grace one gets from being alive so long is a spiritual one,” she believes. This grace helps her to appreciate the value of the life she has lived.

“It’s not so important to live long as to live well,” is Doris’ conviction. Part of that involves preparing for what she calls “that long physical emptiness,” a time when the body refuses to function properly.

The arts also provide furnishings. Literature, opera, ballet, she mentions specifically. Natural scenery counts also, especially in old age: “ I have a beautiful place to look at,” she says of her seacoast site in northern Maine.

Having found this home, she feels reluctant to travel. “My own place gives me satisfaction,” she explains to justify her staying home.

Learning from others receives high marks from Doris Grumbach. Her daughters – theologian, radiologist, and arts scholar among them – have enlarged her appreciation of the world.

This woman, now so encouraging about later life, did not always feel this way. “I hated growing old,” she recalls. “I despaired every ten years,” as she detailed in her journals, diaries that became published books.

A large part of her discontent came from an ideal of physical excellence. Her idol was the great swimmer Gertrude Eberle, a woman who inspired Grumbach to relish ten mile swims.

All her adult life Doris Grumbach has been committed to social action. As a volunteer at the Catholic Worker where she came to know Dorothy Day, she served food to poor people and sold the organization’s newspaper at a penny a copy. Of this experience she says, “It changed my life.” She also much values her four years in the U. S. Navy, serving as an officer.

When she reached 80, old age set in, she says. “I substituted checks for real service and one never gets over the guilt for that.” The ideal of volunteer work on behalf of others retains its grip on her.

Doris Grumbach strongly believes that the secret of life is to have a task, something that you can’t possibly exhaust. If it is something to which you have devoted much of your life, so much the better. What matters most is that you feel a passion for it.

This accomplished writer gives examples of people who never surrendered their passion. Among them is the artist Monet who, when he grew old and could no longer hold a paintbrush, used to strap it to his hand in order to work. “Nothing ever managed to stop that passion,” she says in admiration.

Another such was a sculptor so disabled as to be confined to bed. But in that position he learned to make finger-sized figures of wax and thus he, too, continued to indulge his passion.

Someone asks the speaker whether she appreciates a different kind of humor now. “Far more things seem funny to me now,” she replies. “You take yourself less seriously because you know yourself not that important.”

Someone else wants to know how she is preparing for death. “I used to fear it greatly,” she confesses. “Now I no longer fear it, but I don’t think one is ever prepared for it – ever.”

Her faith helps, to some extent: “Though I have a strong faith, I don’t have the accompaniments.” By that unfamiliar word she seems to mean clear ideas about heaven and life there.

And about the dying: “It’s like travel,” she says. “I want to get there, but I don’t like the trip.”

Richard Griffin

You never know what schemes clever people are devising. The folks at MIT’s Age Lab, for example, are currently enthused about a “biosuit” which, among other things, might protect people from the effects of falling.

Worn under clothing, this lightweight “space suit” would have shock-absorbing material designed to safeguard the vulnerable parts of the human body. In addition, there would be compact motors and other systems making it easier for those with disabilities to walk and navigate obstacles.

Such futuristic devices always stir my imagination and enlarge my thinking about “what if.” Inventors like those working on the space suit remind everyone how much the world can be improved, if only we dare to think “outside the box” of conventional ideas.

The effort to prevent falls, in particular, deserves applause because so many people, especially the older ones among us, fall down so often and with such devastating results. I would wager that individuals reading this column know of someone who has fallen recently. I do.

One of my neighbors fell in her home a few weeks ago and broke a bone in her shoulder. When I inquired from her close friend how my neighbor was doing, she reported that three other people she knows had recently also fallen down.

This past week, I walked into a local bank and approached a teller with whom I like to do business. Not having seen her for a while, I inquired for her health. She informed me that she had fallen at work and broken her shoulder. Just now, after a few weeks recuperating, had she returned to her job.

If this sounds to you like an epidemic, you have come close to the mark. One in every three Americans over age 65 falls each year. This equals 12 million elders who have the misfortune to fall down, most of them from a standing position rather than from a height.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal agency concerned about the problem, reports some frightening statistics. About 13 thousand Americans die each year because of falls, about 10 thousand over age 65. Another 340,000 break their hips, with half of the older adults unable ever to return home to a life of independence, many of them dying within a year.

Hearing such statistics has been enough to make me more careful in recent years. Like many of my age peers, I tread streets and sidewalks much more carefully than when younger. Experience of past falls has made me wary of tripping over obstacles in my path.

Even more than many others, I have reason to take precautions: because of a birth injury to my left arm, I can break falls only by the use of one arm, not two. So on my daily walks out-of-doors, I take care.

This concern has also made me more aware of hazards at home. Small rugs attract my attention to make sure they present no danger. When going downstairs, I always grab hold of the rail. Moving into places poorly lit, I resolve to hire an electrician to install an extra light fixture. Meanwhile, I make a point of navigating those areas slowly.

In the face of dire statistics like those noted above, the need for action on the problem is urgent. Fortunately, we do not have to wait for the space suit to come off the drawing board on to the market. These protections may not have the same high tech pizzaz as the bio garment but they are at hand right now and are of proven value.

Chief among them is physical exercise. Regular exercise provides many benefits, one of them being improvement in balance. A noted researcher into longevity, Dr. Thomas Perls, calls exercise “the number one intervention for the prevention of frailty.”

If you welcome a suggestion for getting started on a modest but effective exercise program, I have a recommendation. You can call 1-800-222-2225, as I did, and the National Institute on Aging will send you a videotape, free of charge.

The exercises it shows you how to do are simple and do not require special equipment. A woman named Margaret Richard performs each one, slowly and clearly, inviting viewers to join her at each step. A detailed guidebook comes with the tape with helpful illustrations and additional information.

If, as this guidebook reports, “more than two-thirds of older adults don’t engage in regular physical activity,” I like to think a chief reason is incorrect ideas about what exercise requires. We think that it will hurt us, or that we need special equipment, or that we have to go to a gym. Others of us labor under the impression it’s for young people or for those who look good in gym clothes.

Starting regular exercise is like giving up smoking: no matter how late in life you begin, you will benefit and the benefits start immediately.

Richard Griffin

Justin danced with Marilyn Monroe, “gently kneading the little tire of baby fat around her waist.”

Anne hosted William Faulkner, in prospect “as daunting as if I were the village priest informed the pope was about to show up for dinner and all I had in the house was cabbage stew and black bread.”

These are two of the many memories recalled by Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays in their newest book, Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York. This husband and wife team of versatile writers and influential literary figures were both natives of Manhattan who came of age there when the scene differed radically from the present one.

“Our habits, manners, language, attitudes in the 1950s were so different from what they are now that in some respects we could almost as well be writing about the era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Gibson Girl.” So the couple writes in the introduction.

Throughout the book, Bernays and Kaplan regale readers with their adventures, separate and shared. I found their stories consistently compelling and often hilarious.

They let a lot hang out, each detailing, for instance, romances with previous boy and girl friends, along with sessions in the offices of their shrinks. Explaining this frankness, Kaplan told me, “I owed it to the reader  –  –   to gloss over that would not be really truthful.”

After they met and determined to marry, the couple learned how to deal with Anne’s parents. Her father, Edward Bernays (who enjoyed one affluent reputation as “father of public relations” and another as a double nephew of Sigmund Freud) and her mother Doris Fleischman, at first disapproved of the match. Their daughter’s intended came from a Jewish family with roots in Russia, not in Germany, the only kind of Jewish origins the parents welcomed.

The wedding itself, an event micromanaged by Edward and Doris, took place in the Bernays home, and featured as officiant a judge unknown to the bridal couple. The photo of the affair suggests some of the discomfort of the bridegroom, wedged into a formal suit and sweating profusely. “Rivers of perspiration, inspired by heat and terror, coursed down his face and soaked the rented suit,” writes Anne of that event in July of 1954.

Whatever the apprehension connected with that day, the match has turned out to be beautifully successful. Though of markedly different temperaments, he reserved and slow to speak, she more spontaneous, they made a marriage proof against the blows that have claimed so many other couples.

The marriage flourished despite, at its beginning, Anne’s almost complete lack of household skills. She was unfamiliar with food shops and supermarkets, and did not know how to cook anything. In time, she had to learn how to cope with know-it-all obstetricians.  

Part of the couple’s success, it seems, stems from a wise decision they made in 1959 to leave their native city and move to Cambridge. By that time they had two young daughters and needed an atmosphere less fevered. As Anne describes the move, “Having lived for almost thirty years in a city with the world’s fastest pulse, I was ready for a change, for a place whose dazzle resided in its slow heart rate.”

The Cambridge of 2002 has, of course, rendered that description quaint.

Anne’s parents, incidentally, also eventually moved to Cambridge. Edward Bernays, as he neared and then surpassed age 100, became well known as an advocate for elder citizens in Massachusetts. The state Office of Elder Affairs used to consult him often and he seemed to take on a late life career as a model centenarian. A local writer of distinction, Larry Tye, has chronicled Bernays’ life in the 1998 book, “The Father of Spin.”

As almost always in a memoir, the photos stir fascination. I found myself scrutinizing them, seeking to find continuities and to trace changes in my friends Justin and Anne over the decades. These pictures alone, scattered throughout the book, provoke reflection about the impact of time on human life.

Without shame, the authors namedrop throughout the memoir, much to the delight of this reader, at least. Hardly a figure famous in the literary world escapes mention, it seems. Norman Mailer became a familiar party companion; they ran into the famous humorist James Thurber, tipsy and boring, at another affair. Justin’s account of Max Schuster, the publisher for whom he worked for a few years, is often richly comic.

Parties were a way of life in Manhattan, providing opportunities for contacts in the literary business and the more personal rewards of friendship. Opting later for a less frenzied, more recollected life allowed Justin and Anne both to raise their three children in relative peace and quiet and to become remarkably productive.

The book will be in the stores by the end of this month; I recommend it to readers at large, but especially to those who feel about New York the way Dr. Johnson felt about his capital city: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”

Richard Griffin

“I have come to the conclusion that there is one essential, profound, underlying problem, and it is that the old are unloved.”

These words come from a French writer, Paul Tournier, who published them some 30 years ago in a book giving advice about growing old. The statement strikes me as expressing a continuing truth important to keep in mind. The temptation to slight, ignore, or even despise old people lies always at hand, even for those of us who are ourselves no longer young.

But the author also indulges in a generalization made invalid by legions of people throughout the world who show heartfelt love for the old. They are to be found everywhere – in homes, on public thoroughfares, in institutions – ministering to elders in need of at least a kind word.

A good case in point are volunteers and staff connected with Little Brothers of the Elderly. Little Brothers began in France, just after World War II. A man named Armand Marquiset felt compassion for the many older people in his country who had been left impoverished by the war and bereft of family members. Seeing how many of them lived in one-room walk-ups under the rooftops of Paris and elsewhere, he determined to reach out to these men and women in the spirit of brotherly love.

This organization, whose motto “To offer flowers before bread” expresses its spirit, now has a presence in eight countries. The United States headquarters is located in Chicago with local affiliates in five other cities, one of them Boston.

Last week I visited the house in Jamaica Plain where the organization makes its home and welcomes elders for monthly breakfasts and dinners. The staff takes pride in this new setting for work and hospitality, a house purchased and rehabilitated with funds contributed by benefactors.

However, the Little Brothers’ chief activity is visiting elders in their homes. The visitors are all of them volunteers, people of various ages who agree to give some time each week to the same older person. About 150 low-income Boston residents over 70 receive visits on a regular schedule, but on six major holidays each year the number swells to between six and seven hundred.

Many of these friendly visitors come from local colleges. Ten or fifteen of the students come from Boston College, enrollers in a program that requires them to give ten hours each week. A student named Katie describes in an annual report what it was like getting to know a woman named Shirley:

“On a Friday in November, we went on an outing to buy food for her three birds. We got back around 6 and she invited me to stay for dinner. Back in her apartment, we heated up chicken, warmed the soup, toasted the bread and cooked broccoli. As we sat down to this meal, I realized how close our relationship had become.”

Marty Guerin, longtime executive director for the Little Brothers in Boston, recalls how she felt when she began as a volunteer: “I loved that there was not a lot of red tape and that people were treated as people.” She continues to love her work and the generosity that characterizes the volunteers.

She explains some of the success of the volunteers by telling of the confidence that the elders feel in their visitors. “Some will not let professionals in,” she says, “but they’ll let us in.” Only once, in her experience of more than 20 years, has she heard of a problem caused by a visitor.

Marty attributes easy acceptance, in part, to the flowers which are the Little Brothers’ trademark. By bringing flowers visitors show how they care about the emotional needs of those they come to see as well as their material needs. Becoming friends to elders receives priority from the volunteers who visit.

In addition to visiting, the Little Brothers also deliver food packages, escort elders to medical and other appointments, run errands, and help with emotional support if elders have to move to assisted living. Volunteers and staff members also telephone the elders to provide reassurance and check on their wellbeing.

The impact made by the Little Brothers in the lives of the elders they serve has happened, I suspect, for reasons that go beneath the surface. Words written by Henri Nouwen may help explain why their visiting older people counts for so much:

“Although old people need a lot of very practical help, more significant to them is someone who offers his or her own aging self as the source of their care. When we have allowed an old man or woman to come alive in the center of our own experience, when we have recognized him or her in our own aging self, we might then be able to paint our self-portrait in a way that can be healing to those in distress. As long as the old remain strangers, caring can hardly be meaningful.”

Richard Griffin