I am a modern woman with a traditionalist’s soul. I am old enough to remember sound of dairy truck as its clinking glass bottles announced new day’s dairy delivery. I have an even more poignant memory of day I realized that milk had became homogenized as well as pasteurized. Young as I was, I knew then, that though my children would, hear, taste, feel and experience life in ways as yet unimaginable to me, they would never know joy of sticking their finger down narrow neck of glass bottle to taste cream on top when their mother wasn’t looking. In fact, they probably would never know taste of genuine fresh cream.

Life moves on, and I have moved with I; part of a virtual world. I use web and I live on e-mail far too much. Yes, writing a book is easier in a document than on a typewriter. And, I know good marriages that started with innocent e-mails. I know that technology is shrinking our world in ways that are more positive than not. Still, I miss Diana and Josh. Our virtual connection allows us to say things we might not ever feel free enough to say in person. E-mail does keep us connected, but deep down, I miss easy laughter and touch of both. The essence of each of them is no longer in my life. When I let myself think about that, I miss reality of what we used to have.

Life is too hard to do alone,

Dr. D.

Dorree Lynn, PH.D.

We are not aging as our parents did, and many of us we are unwilling to simply get old and become useless, to be put out to pasture until we die. The truth is slowly and subtly dawning on our society that life today includes a new age.

There was a time when people who had gone through childhood, adolescence, and "productive years" of adulthood came rather abruptly upon old age, or at best what we call senior years. But now, we are discovering a time in-between, truly a new age. Writers, theoreticians, and philosophers are fumbling in dark trying to name this period. Metaphorically speaking, they are under covers, periodically letting their feet hit floor to carry them beyond safety of their past to grope, fumble, and reach towards an understanding of love and sex for a new population in new millennium. A half-century is no longer so very old. A new paradigm is in making and we are re-learning to develop it as we confront our new challenges. As sexuality wanes, sensuality gains. Perhaps, instead of retirement, we will now call it re-firement. Let us learn to live as we are coming to be.

Life is too hard to do alone,

Dr. D.

Dorree Lynn, PH.D.