She writes, "The truth, I must acknowledge, is that I'm not in the same place I was when I began; the incidents and accidents of the past three years have made me half in love with uncertainty. Once again, I have no idea what work I'll do next or what companions will be with me, but I'm not fighting and raging against it. Expectancy is in the air.

"Certain points have clarified, the first being that we are more individuated than when younger, and what becomes clear for me may be utterly different than for you. I'd like to stay as healthy and attractive as I'm able, to do simultaneously what Thomas Moore suggests: accept age and cultivate the Venusian. I'd like to mentor a young person and work for progressive change. I intend to live with people of shared affinity in some form of community, let down barriers to love, and find sensuality in unexpected places. I want to treasure wildness and spontaneity and take surrender as a daily practice."

Davidson met a man who took up hang gliding at 80, a woman who started a theater company at 57, a couple in their 60s who decided to adopt a baby. She concludes, "The country ahead, from the extensive scouting I've done, is not arid — but rich and unpredictable."

Redrawing boundaries

"Aging can be the gift that establishes the boundaries of our lives, which previously knew far fewer confines and brooked far fewer restrictions. Everything within those boundaries becomes thus more precious than it was before: love, learning, family, work, health and even the lessened time itself.... The good is easier now to see; it is closer to the touch and the taking, if we are only willing to look truthfully at it there and gather it up from amid the cares that may surround it."

— Sherwin B. Nuland, "The Art of Aging."

Percentage of the pie

A recent report from Boston College's Center on Aging and Work says that in 1980 people 50 and older made up 26 percent of the U.S. population, and in 2050 they will represent 37 percent of the population.

Aging and wealth

Americans 55 to 64 have amassed the greatest wealth. Their median net worth is $162,000. More than 15 percent of them have a net worth of over $500,000 as compared to 12 percent of those over 65 and less than 2 percent of those under 35.

— U.S. Census Bureau, 2005

Family finances

Many people in their 50s find themselves with financial responsibilities, making it difficult to try a new way to live. According to a recent survey by Putnam Investments:

• About 29 million working adults 45 or older have at least one living parent, and one-fifth of them (or 6 million workers) help their parents financially. They pay an average of $240 per month in parental support.

• One-fourth of working adults 45 or older, who have a child who is 25 or older, either house or write a rent check for that child. Nearly half provide some degree of financial support for adult children.

• Americans used to pay off their mortgages before they retired. They don't anymore. Half of all those over 64 have an average of 12 years left on their mortgages.

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E-mail: susan@desnews.com