One Life. Five Wives.

Plus: Moving to Montana, and learning to love bees. Introducing the three runners-up to our Senior Essay Contest.

394

Earlier this year, we announced our first-ever essay contest for high school students, asking them to describe a problem troubling American society and how they would fix it. More than 400 teenagers entered, writing about social media, porn, high school bullies, and more. It was a smashing success, and you can read the winning essay here.

After all that, we thought it only fair to pass the mic to the older generation. This October, we asked readers aged 70 and up to tell us a story about an event that shaped their lives and helped bring them wisdom or a fresh perspective.

Once again we had more than 400 submissions, this time from 47 states—hey, Alaska, Vermont, and Nevada, reach out next time!—and 10 countries, including the UK, Australia, South Korea, Italy, South Africa, and China.

Ilan Chaim from Jerusalem wrote about fighting in the Six-Day War.

Jo Ann Jennings from Kansas wrote about joining the Peace Corps after dreaming about it for fifty years.

Bill Hankins from Cordele, Georgia, submitted a beautiful poem. One poignant line read: Peace will begin when expectation ends.

We have spent weeks sifting through all of the entries, which contained the kind of profound wisdom and wit that can be accrued only over time. Today, we announce our three runners-up:

(From L to R) Joan McCaul, Cheri Block Sabraw, and Jonathan Rosenberg.

First, we have Joan McCaul, a 74-year-old living in Queensland, Australia. She is a retired teacher who enjoys films, her children and grandchildren, and spending time in her garden. In her beautiful essay, she reflects on the wisdom we might miss out on if we don’t slow down and listen—especially to our children.

Cheri Block Sabraw is a 73-year-old living in Montana. She taught writing for 26 years and founded her own academy at 48. She has a master’s degree and wrote a thesis on W. G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz. Her hobbies include oil painting, writing, and walking. In her essay, she writes about the mayhem and chaos of everyday life, and describes how there is a way out. And it is, in fact, quite lovely.

Finally, Jonathan Rosenberg, 72, is a playwright and producer living in San Diego, California. His most recent musical, East Carson Street, will have its world premiere at Bell Works in Holmdel, New Jersey, in May 2024. In his essay, he writes about finding The One after four failed marriages.

We are humbled and honored that so many of you chose to share your stories with us. Stay tuned for the winning essay tomorrow—and tell us about your own hard-won wisdom in the comments.

Stop and Watch the Bees

Joan McCaul

December 25, 2023

Thirty years ago, I was rushing to get my son and daughter, who were then eight and ten, out of the house and into the car to go to school. All parents know the drill: children passing each other in a blur of activity, looking for sports jerseys and musical instruments that should have been put out the night before. Kids and adults become whirring satellites, each on a different orbit.

It was spring, which is lovely in my part of Australia—sunny and warm.

But I wasn’t enjoying the weather. My only concern was getting my kids and their things on their way, and my son, Stephen, was nowhere to be seen.

“Where are you, Stephen?” I called out from the kitchen, in the vague direction of the stairs. “Are you dressed?”

I climbed the stairs to look for him, and peered into the bedroom my husband and I shared.

That’s when I found him, sitting on our bed in his undies, staring at the tulipwood tree outside our large bedroom window. It was covered in yellow spring blossoms.

Read full story

The Inconvenience of It All

Cheri Block Sabraw

December 25, 2023

In my efforts over 26 years to motivate high school juniors to engage themselves with the writings of Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller—pioneers of the transcendentalist literary movement in the mid-nineteenth century—I gave them homework to live a simpler life for a month.

I instructed my students to give up one convenience, which included, through the years, remote controls, beds, hot water, television, radio, curling irons, and cars, and then write about the experience in Thoreauvian style.

Little did I know that I would live out my own assignment forty years later.

Months away from my 70th birthday in 2019, we purchased a rural property in south central Montana to spend half of our year. We were twenty miles from the closest town with a population of 1,500 people. The whole county had double that.

Read full story

Finding Ilene

Jonathan Rosenberg

December 25, 2023

While I have not lived past lives, I’ve had many past wives. And as it turns out, those do win you some wisdom.

In my seventy-two years I’ve been married five times, once per decade beginning in my twenties. I’m not proud of this, but it does help define me. Some may call me naive, and I’m sure some of my ex-wives would call me worse.

From those marriages came two children, two stepchildren, two grandchildren, and an all but empty bank account. And naturally, some lessons.

My first wedding was in 1973. She was 21 and I was 22. We were both young, inexperienced, and idealistic.

We lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We owned a house and I had a good job as a teacher. I enrolled in guitar lessons at a community college and started, almost immediately, to write my own songs. I earned my radio operator license and was a disk jockey at an independent music station. I wrote album and concert reviews for the local paper.

But on the inside I was confused. I had a good life, but I wanted a bigger one.

Read full story

Tomorrow, we’ll announce the winner of our contest. And if you want to support our mission of publishing writers both young and old, become a Free Press subscriber today:

KDB

Dec 29, 2023

What on earth...? I know for a fact that there were better submissions than these. Can we please read the one about the 6 Day war? That sounds way more interesting.

Expand full comment

David N. Harvey

Dec 28, 2023

Dasha, thanks for the note. I think what we're dealing with here (though I hadn't thought about it until I read what you wrote) is the old golden mean philosophy . I read a lot about it in Aristotle's "Ethics". , which I finished maybe forty years ago. I recommend the work. It's not pretentious, and it's easy to read. And, except for his thoughts on women and slavery, which were simply the common assumptions in those days, what he wrote made a lot of sense.

Thanks again.

69 more comments...