Editor’s Note: Jane Juska is the author of A Round-Heeled Woman and Unaccompanied Women.

Not with me though. I am not going into summer this year.

For seventy years I went willingly, even enthusiastically, and for the most part I enjoyed each one. But now I am seventy-five and the next few months are going to be pretty dark. It’s not that I don’t want to see my family at this reunion someone cooked up because of course I do. And it’s not that I’m crippled or addled; I’m the same as I was last year at seventy-four, just a bit dizzier when I step off a curb or pull back from a motor vehicle shooting through the yellow light. No, the problem is that I will have to go to Nordstrom and find a bathing suit. They have the most and the biggest. I know that because it’s where I went ten years ago when I was only sixty-five. And I found decent coverage. But it wore out. The other day I got it out of the closet, from way in the back, and put it on, and there is almost nothing left of the seat of it and the bra has disintegrated into something that feels like sand and I thought, “Gee, this used to have shape and size and substance—like me!” Why couldn’t my family have chosen a mountain or a city for this outing? Why a lake?! The future looks bleak.

There comes a time in one’s life when you just can’t beat it anymore. Your body is old and it doesn’t matter how lively you are in conversation or in mind or behavior. Your body does its own thing. It sags. One day, if you live long enough, all the skin of your whole entire body will be down around your ankles. And then what will your grandchildren say? Well, they have been saying it ever since they were able to talk, even before that when they crawled up into our faces and moved their tiny fingers along our tiny lines. And when they gained speech, they added "Grandma, are you going to die?" "Yes, sweetie, I am." But before I do that, I have got to face the summer, this summer with all those children who will gather around the bonfire on the shore of the lake where they will roast marshmallows and look for the brightest star in the night sky. It’s where their parents will look at me, then at each other and offer a silent prayer: "Kill me before I look like that."

Now, I could simply not go to that reunion. I could feign illness. I could sprain something. I could have lots of doctor appointments. Or I could go and sit on the shore in my bought-for-the-occasion cover-up and watch the sporting life as it passes me by. But no. I’m going. I’ll wear that damn cover-up right to the edge of the lake from where I’ll hear, "Grandma, come on in!" And I will. I will toss my cover-up aside and there I’ll be in my brand new bathing suit on my same old body. And I will wade into the water right up to my ankles, my knees, my shoulders. Floral skirt of my new bathing suit billowing out across the waves, elasto-plast bra securely in place, I will swim into the life around me and dive under the water and tickle the toes of the children who came from me. "Watch out for grandma!" they’ll call. "She’s trying to catch us!" Indeed, I am. How could I even think about passing up an opportunity like that.