Doris, our lady of "never too late"

The sheer tonnage of this (ahem) unusual book makes you pay attention. The gold-edged pages, the red ribbon bookmark, the vast size (10+ by 13+ inches) and the quotes on the back, including Maira Kalman's, "I wish Lauren Redniss would write and illustrate my biography in the DREAMY, LUMINOUS way she did Doris Eaton Travis's," demand you muster your strength and lift it for deeper examination.

Referred to by Amazon.com as a "bargain book," which I interpret to mean that few copies remain, Century Girl is a life story told in oversized collage/journal style by Pulitzer Prize-nominee Lauren Redniss, a teacher at Parsons School of Design (as of publication in 2006). It is the biography of Doris Eaton Travis, at 14 the youngest girl in the Ziegfeld Follies, recipient of an honorary doctorate at 101. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate in history at the age of 88, she could easily be the poster girl for all of us who, having reached senior citizen territory, know we still have aspirations.

Yes, the volume was not published in the last few months, but that doesn't keep me from feeling all squishy and admiration-filled toward Regan, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, for their boldness at producing this journaler's fantasy of a book.

There a few aspects of life that have just one dimension. Situations, objects, theories and people are layered and nuanced, their meanings not always accessible in the moment. In my apparent role as amateur contemplative, I seem to have the assignment of looking, as best I can, behind the curtain. I think messages - and messengers - appear to us, a line of hesitant job applicants who want us to coax information from them instead of speaking up. Intuit, interpret, question and dig, for the truth is not always sitting there like a miner's fantasy nugget beside the stream. I received Doris Eaton's story as a gift, a wrapped present and, in the way of so many encounters, as a teacher.

Let us agree, if we can, on the fact that I am going to sneak up on the topic of "it's never too late" from as many directions as I can. Maybe I should have some warning code in the post's title, saying we are back in the same old territory, a variation on the spoiler alert.

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE. If we are drawing breath on our own, we have the potential to move with a bold or tremulous step forward along our ever-unfolding path. Discouragement is not our destiny. This is the Big Adventure. Woody Allen is credited with saying, "Eighty per cent of success is showing up." That is absolutely where it begins. In whatever way, by whatever definition, we need to keep showing up for ourselves. We are here to grow, to inch or leap away from where we stood yesterday. You are the only one who knows what the next step needs to be. How excellent, for then no one can tell you that you're doing it wrong.