As we enter this season of grace and gratitude, I find myself feeling especially grateful this year.  Grateful for having found a community of writers who helped me birth this first novel. Grateful for having secured a publishing contract  with Penguin Books. Grateful for having the great good luck of having been sent to  a thoughtful art director who transformed my novel into a jewel of a book.

And finally, most importantly, grateful for having worked on and won four more years with Barack Obama.  Thank the Goddess of all Good Writers that my book will be published while a Democrat is in office.

Reveling in all this great good fortune, I impulsively bought a plane ticket and shoes and coat and  frock to attend the presidential inauguration in January.  Even without an invitation to an inaugural ball, this Cinderella can still get dressed to the nines and traipse off into the winter night to watch the festivities from a fancy restaurant.

It is, I’m sure, a silly indulgence, on the level of obsessively watching news clips of Republicans wringing hands and eating crow over their climactic defeat at the polls. Nevertheless, on the eve of my fiftieth year, I realize that youth has been entirely overrated.

Nothing quite compares to the giddy exuberance  of joy in middle age. Not even champagne.