SOURCE: “The Triumph of Age,” in Belles Lettres, Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter, 1989, p. 7.

In the following excerpt, Bader offers a tempered assessment of Age.

“I suppose most couples the age of Rupert and me are not expected to be still compelled by sex,” writes Hortense Calisher. But Gemma and Rupert (he, seventy-three and she, seventy-seven) have little time for the supposed-to-bes and the process of graceful aging. Thirty-five years into their marriage, they still surprise and baffle one another. Sometimes their anger comes through, but more often, joy, reveling in one another’s being—physically, yes, but also emotionally and intellectually. Whether our witness is to their shared laughter or pain or to their mundane or worldly talk, we are privy to the special relationship they have worked so hard to create.

In a series of short, alternating chapters, we are taken inside the soul and psyche of each...