She came, as a volunteer worker in a service group, to address our club meeting.

Charming, sparkling with health and vitality, she could easily have passed for under 40, although she boasted she had just crossed the half-century mark.

But interesting as was her talk, she did not say what we wanted to hear.

Her main thrust was to encourage our seniors, a full generation or older than she, to put more action in our lives. More zest.

“Don’t shut yourselves off,” she urged. Don’t sit home enslaved to the TV. Get out. Keep moving. Go places. Do things. Get out into the community. They need your talents and your time. You have much to give. Give it.

And don’t ever say, “I can’t,” because you can. Whatever you still want to do, you can. Just go after it. Stretch your vision.

Certainly she meant well. She just didn’t understand.

Who of us seniors doesn’t want, nay, yearn to do more? Go more. See more. Work more. Help more. To take a long drive, to hop a plane to hear and there. To visit and be visited. To still do all we once did. To be part of the crowd-on-the-move.

It’s been months since I’ve posted one of my grandmother’s. Her thoughts on a “pep talk,” strike a familiar cord. While, I’m up-and-about working, cooking, doing yard- and housework, shopping, and other day-to-day chores, I’ve starting to feel the drag on my energies. A symptom of age.

This is the first year in decades that I haven’t baking a dozen or more different types of holiday cookies and candies, then packaged, and sent them to friends and family. The gifts I usually purchased in October, so they can be given to people by Thanksgiving, are a mirage.

I started to write my holiday letter a few days ago. If I’m lucky, I’ll make copies and get it in the mail by early December. Although, it’ll probably take me a week or so to address the cards. Groan.

This year, I procrastinated in trimming bushes, and preparing them for the winter. Only half of my grasses, lavenders, and other flowering bushed received their obligatory haircuts. With the nights now dipping into the 20’s, it’s too late to trim them.

Last week, I pulled some carrots out of the garden, and realized I never pulled out the tomatoes, cucumbers, and other vegetables, which long ago stopped producing. The large rose along the back fence, which had phenomenal growth over the summer, is still loosely tied to the fence. It should have been cut back so the branches don’t break if it snows are they get covered with ice.

I don’t think I need a pep talk. I need the energy and motivation I had a few years ago.