How could old age be a medical diagnosis when I wasnt even forty?Lolly Winston if aging is difficult for those of us who were only sometimes cute, she says, just imagine how hard it must be for the aging knockouts, the living dolls. Rebecca McClanahanI love sex. I love middle-age sex. I love married sex. I'm almost fifty and I've never felt sexier. But damn, it took a long time to get here. Ellen SussmanAnd who is that woman who looks just like me in the mirror behind the bar? Could she be some evil twin, sitting in a place Id never go alone, acting like a hanger-on, a groupie?Lisa Norris even past sixty (perhaps especially past sixty), women like me feel impelled to stick to the myths we have invented for ourselves.Annick SmithSlow down. Dont be so frenetic. Contemplate on the insights you have gained. Listen to the silence within. Bharti Kirchner The young womans body I live inside still, that unforgotten home, is a text. It is engraved with memory Meredith HallA collection of blazingly honest, smart, and often humorous essays on middle age contributed by well-known writers such as Julia Glass, Joyce Maynard, Lolly Winston, Antonya Nelson, Diana Abu-Jaber, Judy Blunt, Lauren Slater, and other voices of the baby boom generation.In the tradition of the bestselling A Bitch in the House, Kiss Tomorrow Hello brings together the experiences and reflections of women as they embark on a new stage of life. Many women in their forties, fifties, and sixties discover that they are racing uphill, trying desperately to keep their romantic and social lives afloat just as those things they believe constant start to shift: The body begins its inevitable decline, sometimes gracefully, sometimes less soThe twenty-five stellar writers gathered here explore a wide range of concerns, including keeping love (and sex) alive, discovering family secrets, negotiating the demands of illness and infertility, letting children go, making peace with parents, and contemplating plastic surgery. The tales are true, the confessions candid, and the humor infectiousjust what youd expect from the women whose works represent the best writings of their generation. From Lynn Freeds wry Happy Birthday to Me to Pam Houstons hilarious Coffee Dates with a Beefcake; from Ellen Sussman's "Tearing Up the Sheets" to Julia Glass's "I Have a Crush on Ted Geisel," Kiss Tomorrow Hello is a wise, lyrical, and sexy look at the pleasures and perils of midlife.