Lke me, like me, like me

O what is wrong with me? I heard that a longtime friend's daughter had moved to town and I want to invite her to come over to break the Yom Kippur fast and I keep thinking how I have to prove to her that we are cool, we are interesting, we are people worth knowing, even though we are her parents' ages. Even though kids today supposedly like to hang out with their Baby Boomer parents. I try to think about how I would have responded to such an invitation from an *old old stranger* when I was 24 or 25. I did have such an invitation when I was 29, from an old old family friend who was only about five years older, and she did seem older, more settled, with husband and house and kids and friends with same, though she was so very sweet and fun and irreverent. Such prejudices we have. Or maybe it's only me with such prejudices. And again I think of my cousin B, who died at 97, and gave me the pick of her jewelry (the only older relative with pierced ears!) and books, and who would go for walks with her neighbor who was in her 20s and from the Philippines, and would visit back and forth with her nieces and nephews. My 10-year-old step-step grandchild called on Sunday and said Happy Birthday, then, I mean Happy Grandparents' Day, and neither L nor I had had any idea that it was any such day. O, I say to myself, she just likes using her new cell phone.