When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
I had dinner tonight with some millennial writers and it was sort of amazing. They are reading all kinds of obscure literature and poetry and plays. They are writing plays and putting them on. Some are in therapy. Some love their parents. Their post college years have been decimated by Covid and yet they are full of the future, full of questions, in love with their friends. They make plans. They live in Brooklyn, they like to dance, they host theme parties, and help with the dishes. I felt old and young. I was very neurotic in my mid-twenties. All I wanted was to know how things were going to turn out.
What kind of twenty something were you?
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Betsy Lerner 
Work-wise, encumbered by my own and others’ expectations, beaten down by other more competitive 20 somethings and no real idea how to get to what I didn’t know I wanted. It was a strange and distesssing time. Lucky I was in love.
20 – identity crisis
22 – drafted
23 – married
25 – divorced
28 – fled to Europe
“What kind of twenty something were you?”
Stoned.
Wed.
Divorced.
Enrolled.
Graduated.
Wed again.
Drunk.
Enrolled again.
Parent.
Drunk again.
Lived in Africa.
Through no effort of my own I was offered a book deal the head of the publishing company said would make me famous. With the advance I bought a Cadillac and a white German Shepherd dog that bit everybody, including me. I’m not famous so you know I F-d up the book deal. The dog was hit by a pick-up, thank God, or one of the neighborhood kids that teased him would not have had a face left.
Went into business, had an affair with a married guy, lost my business, lost the guy.
It was a hell of a decade.
At 23 I was a very young mother and widow who wrote poetry for all my dates. I burned them all a few years later. Those days I lived fully without effort every day, worried, happy, sad, delighted by my son. I did wonder whether I would ever be able to be a successful writer. At 70 I’m going all out.
Working in publishing
Married to 1st husband
Controlled by demons
Did the dishes
At 73 still working in publishing
Married to husband #4
I’m controlling demons
22 We were going to the moon. I helped. Anything is possible.
25 Met the perfect girl, still married, 3 kids, 1 died.
28 Made computers talk, solved the AI equation, automated a factory.
30 Began writing… still trying.
“What kind of twenty something were you?”
A dumb one – truly.
No real guidance. No real choices. So I got married too young, had babies too young, became a single working mother who spent too much time in the clubs with lots of good and bad boys.
I was a reliable and responsible young woman for the most part, with so much to learn.
I think I was more qualified to be an adult in my twenties than I am now in my sixties…
What a fascinating question. (And answers.) i
Oops my iPad ran off without me. Starry eyed and sure I knew it all. 19, married, teaching. 20-24 living in Switzerland, first child. 24-29 3 more children. 30, just about ready for a feminist revolution and writing.