Middle-aged women have perspective enough to see what’s important and what isn’t. “If you are young and you are reading this,” says writer Mary Ruefle, “perhaps you will understand the gleam in the eye of any woman who is sixty, seventy, eighty, or ninety: they cannot take you seriously (sorry) for you are just a girl to them, despite your babies and shoes and lovemaking and all of that. You are just a girl playing at life.”
