> It is not the big number—eighty—that shocks me (though I sometimes gulp when I utter it), but, rather, the banal image of an implacable hourglass, most of its

> It is not the big number—eighty—that shocks me (though I sometimes gulp when I utter it), but, rather, the banal image of an implacable hourglass, most of its sand heaped at the bottom, the last negligible pinch of grains sifting down, unstoppable, a finite amount, less each time I look. That is such a beautiful description of facing one's own old age.