“Including the Bureau of Statistics.” I tasted the creamy confection. “Ummm.”

“That means that next month instead of being sixty-one, you’ll be fifty-nine. Won’t that be nice?”

“No. It means I’ll have to go back to teaching. I couldn’t retire until I was sixty.” I turned the plastic spoon upside down and licked it. “What’s this about? You’ll be sixty-six and I’ll be sixty-one. So what?”

“So I’ve decided not to be sixty-six.”

“Okay. Let me know when we get to be twins.”

The ice cream chair squealed as Mary Alice sat down. “Don’t be a smartass. I’ve decided I’m not going to be eighty years old when the twins start college.”

I stirred the chocolate around in my yogurt and did some quick arithmetic. The twins, Fay and May, are Mary Alice’s two-year-old granddaughters. “You won’t be,” I said happily. “You’ll be eighty-two.” I moved my legs quickly. Sister has always been a kicker.

“I have decided I’ll be seventy. Or sixty-nine. That’s a normal age for grandparents of college kids.” She examined her plastic spoon. “You know, I’ve never figured out why they make these spoons so deep. You always have to stick your tongue way down in them or wait until the yogurt melts and sip it like soup. You’re going to have the same problem, you know.”

Since I’ve been Mary Alice’s sister for so long, the jump in topic to the plastic spoon didn’t confuse me at all. The problem she was talking about was that, with the exception of my son Alan, our kids were taking their own sweet time having kids of their own.

So I repeated the obvious lie. “Age is all in your mind.”

“Get real.” Sister stirred her yogurt thoughtfully.

I decided to change the subject. “Remember when we didn’t know what yogurt was? Never even heard of it?”

“Granddaddy used to eat clabber with sugar and cinnamon on it. Same thing.”

“Yogurt sounds better than clabber.”

“No, it doesn’t. Yogurt’s an ugly name.”

So much for that conversation. I glanced over at Sister and the light dawned.

“It’s a man. You’ve met a younger man.”

Sister smiled sheepishly.

“Who is he and how much younger?” I had to speak loudly because a group of teenagers, stylishly dressed in tatters, had come into the shop and were yelling out orders.

“His name is Berry West.”

“Barry?”

“Berry. Like straw. And he’s about sixty.”

Sixty? I grinned.

“What?” Mary Alice said. “What are you grinning about?”

“I thought you were going to say forty-something. What’s the problem?”

“I’m used to older men.”

“That’s the truth. How old is your boyfriend Buddy Johnson? Ninety? Has he recovered from your hot tub yet?”

“He’s fine.”