A woman looks forward to being old. She looks forward to wearing strange-looking clothes. She imagines that if she has a husband, they will do things together. She had once had a husband and wondered if she would ever have another. She has a child that will soon be grown and feels it would be nice to have another person to talk to. She talks to her friend Mitchell about this one day in the park. She tells him she is looking forward to her late middle age. She is now in her late youth or early middle age. She is excited because getting older means things will be calmer. In this vein, it means one will have less sexual desire. Mitchell is surprised and almost angry about this. Mitchell points out that one will have more wisdom at that age, but also more pain. They watch a middle-aged couple walk in the park and assume they are in pain. She thinks about how eventually everything will start to let go, like her hearing and other physical abilities. She thinks of things she will do when she is older, like wearing hats too high on her head and smiling painful smiles at babies. She will have trouble sleeping and must rest frequently. But before any of these things happen, her life will slow down in her middle age. She won’t have as much going on as she used to. She will develop fixed habits and spend her evenings with her husband on the lawn reading books. She said she was looking forward to twenty years after that time where she could wear anything she wanted and not have anyone tell her she looked foolish, especially not her husband. Mitchell appears not to understand her. Though, she does think about how none of this may be true when the time comes for her to be older. She imagines that freedom may not be enjoyed with the more negative things that come with aging. She thinks now this freedom of aging will not bring her joy.