Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers, and the Crucible of Aging

Once I told my 3 year old son that I'm no longer growing bigger, but older, he was so supprised, so was I. As I'm getting close to 30, I'm really wondering how to deal with getting old, also wondering how other women deal with it. But I never dare to ask anyone. I had one month vacation back to China in August. Instead enjoying the visit, I was dealing with my brother's vanishing due to depress. And I was facing how sad my mom was and how she looked much older than her age, my father's fragile emotion. We also have to know how to support my 90 year old grandpa and 80 year old grandma. My mother-in-law just got her US citizenship after 10 years jobless in US. She was a professor back in China. When I got married 5 years ago, I was so astonished by my mother-in-law's temper. With these, I have questions and fears in my mind. Reading Lillian Rubin's book didn't help me to resolve the tangle in my life, but it does help me to get answers to my Whys and face the fears in my life. I'm so glad she wrote this book and share her own experiences with us.

Intimations of mortality form the framework for this eloquent memoir. Lillian Rubin is a brilliant, empathic woman, who over the years has bravely probed such topics as children who survive trauma, and families in transition. Now, at 75, she faces her own journey toward the inevitable, and generously shares her thoughts, fears, and insights. Rubin bares her psyche in this frank and forthright exploration of what is like to grow old--to savor the time remaining and explore the injuries and lessons of the past. Rubin shares with readers her own courageous meditations on mortality, as she faces her 75th birthday. When the fates collide to present the author with reason to worry not only about her daughter's health, her husband's well being, and her own life-threatening health crisis all at once, Rubin looks at the landscape of love, aging and loss with unflinching clarity. What does it mean to grow old? Where do faith, forgiveness, and redemption fit in? On page after page, I marvelled at the author's candor, at her ability to expose herself, to publically take that final, private tally of losses and gains. But by doing so, Rubin gives us all a gift. Above all, I found this to be a hopeful book, probing--and celebrating--the ties between mother and daughter, and underscoring the possibility of improving the landscape of love from generation to generation.