Zelda would have turned 107 on September 11th or 12th (people of her generation often didn’t know their “real” birthdays). She died a few months short of her 105th birthday.
This was taken when she was a young 99, on one of her daily 3-mile walks. Halfway through, she asked solicitously, “Do you need to sit down, dear?” We sat for a few minutes on the bridge spanning the Intercoastal Waterway at 163rd Street and discussed Consequential Strangers, a book she could have written!
I met Zelda on the tennis courts when she was 92. All in white with an oversized racket that dwarfed her barely-five-foot frame, she reached out and put a hand on my arm as I walked through the gate. “Dear, you have a very nice stroke.” By her own admission, she was quite the pick-up artist. It worked on me; I willingly became one of her “conquests.”
Zelda was interested in everything. She was smart, direct, and always funny — an unapologetic and charming ham. She punctuated every conversation with an “a propos” — an amusing witticism or a dirty joke inspired by the topic at hand.
Once, when I complained about something not going well for me — it could have been work or family or some annoyance at the condo — without missing a beat, she said, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
“Good quote. Where’s it from — and how do you do that?” I asked, clarifying, “remember all this stuff? You have an a propos up your sleeve for everything.”
“Doesn’t that quotation sound familiar to you?” she asked playfully.
It did, I admitted, but I didn’t know why.
“I read it in your book, honey. It’s the quote by William James at the beginning of Chapter 6.”