Asked by a reporter how she felt about being in this stage of life at age 60 Meryl Streep said in Vanity Fair magazine that she was flipping “grateful to be alive.” Actually she used a word more adamant than “flipping” and more in the character of Jane, her randy character in “It’s Complicated” than her iron-faced nun in “Doubt.”

You could say that if you were the Marvelous Meryl you’d be grateful for what you have, too. Continued amazing career, nice family, no worries about the mortgage, great skin.

In the interview she goes on to explain, “I have so many friends who are sick or gone, and I’m here. Are you kidding? No complaints.”

I mentioned Meryl’s comments to a friend when we met for an end-of-year drink. For her 2009 was more memorably bad than good. She was beat up in a brutal sexual attack that occurred one morning when she was working alone in her office.

She said she fought and punched and bit her attacker because she knew how awful her grandson would feel if anything bad happened to her. She has a couple of scabs on her face but she still laughs like no one else and says that she’s determined to not let the assault get in the way of her freedom. She wears a whistle around her neck and has given them to some of her colleagues, but she continues to walk where she pleases, night and day. And on New Year’s Eve she would party like always, banging pots and pans in the street and drinking champagne.

Then we talked about our usual things, books and movies and mutual pals and I toasted her fierce spirit and convincing scream and we drank to being alive.

Over Christmas we got a unique holiday greeting from a designer friend whose teenage son had some scary surgery at the end of the year to correct scoliosis. The card shows two different X-ray images and is as startling as Frida Kahlo’s painting of her torso sliced in half. The first picture is the young man’s spine yanked to the left and pushed to the right. To further the image there’s a photo of a tangled spaghetti pile of Christmas tree lights. Also pictured is the good news X-ray of a spine notched with pins and staples, but straight. Next to it is a photo of a simple single string of holiday lights. The card’s message reads: “Gratitude, 2009.”

There are probably endless reasons to be flipping grateful even in our world of wars and lost jobs and foreclosed houses and uncertain health insurance and dread of the next guy getting on a plane who knows how to work his bomb. You could spend all your time thinking only about the bad stuff. But I believe in taking inspiration from wherever it comes and the other night on Masterpiece Theatre a dying woman told her young friend that worry is a waste of time.

For more reassurance I suggest a trip to a planetarium like the amazing exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences. Sit in the dark and fly through space and you might take comfort that the sky really isn’t falling, although it does seem to burn up a lot with all those dying stars and new ones coming along. By comparison human beings are very tiny and somewhat insignificant. But we’re still here and for that we can be grateful.

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol, Ca. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com

This Christmas the Texas daughter and her family will not be coming this way for the holidays so I went to Austin for a pre-Noel visit. I wanted to make sure she didn’t miss anything not being in California. We talked about doing some of our traditional things, maybe go to the Nutcracker or a Christmas concert. But in keeping with the spirit of Austin, a city proud of its weirdness, we opted for new traditions.

First was a Julia Child dinner party where guests were urged to bring recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Our hosts dressed as Julia and Paul, one in polyester knit dress and high heels and his partner in goatee and beret. We dined on dishes awash in butter and cheese and trilled “bon appetit’ in our most flamboyant Julia voices while visions of the real Julia flashed on a big screen next to a Christmas tree.

At another Austin holiday gala we mingled with the pretty people in a cocktail lounge of a downtown hotel where the bar stools are made out of hairy white cowhide. When she lived in San Francisco daughter Sam and her sisters and girlfriends would put on their holiday glitz and take over a bar in one of the city’s hotels. Not yet having a core group in Austin she invited a random mix of women she met through her book club, the neighborhood, the gym and a stepmothers group to dress in their merriest and meet for drinks. They showed up and brought friends. I was the token import, dressed in Wine Country casual and wishing for a pair of cowboy boots.

She’ll be fine in Texas for Christmas. Her new Austin ways mix well with a number of California holiday favorites. She’s made her grandmother’s Russian tea cookies. For Christmas dinner she’ll make the family spinach and walnut salad, as well as some new dish “from Julia.”

Her tree is decorated with familiar ornaments. I spotted the tiny rocking horse made out of red felt that her grandmother gave her when she was two. And she still has the music box covered with Santa elves from when she was a baby. It’s pretty beat up but still produces a jaunty “Jingle Bells.”

Christmas is not always so portable. There were two Christmases that I spent without any family. They were the years my husband and I lived in Germany and although our daughters were in California I looked forward to the two of us having a cozy, festive holiday in Europe. The first Christmas my husband, flying from Nairobi to Frankfurt, ended up stuck at an airport in London, leaving me with the cat. Some friends took pity and asked me to dinner, and the traveler got back late that night but in time for dessert.

Another Christmas the two of us took the train to Italy to a small mountain village where it snowed and was perfectly festive until Santa took a slip on the ice outside the hotel on Christmas Eve. A cab driver, heaped in holiday good will, took him down the mountain to a hospital to have x-rays on his back. He was okay but they kept him overnight for observation and I returned to the hotel to drink Chianti with the ghosts of Christmas past.

This year the family will be at home for Christmas, both in California and Texas. And God bless us everyone for Skype.

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol, Ca. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com

I have a problem with themed sweaters. That probably makes me sound like a curmudgeon to some people, especially this time of year. I think those little sweaters decorated with teddy bears and elves with candy canes are very sweet when worn by little children. And that’s where they belong.

On a mature adult they make me nervous. My friends and I sometimes do a fashion disaster alert over the holidays, looking for grown-ups in reindeer sweatshirts, Santa sweaters and jingle bell earrings. You can find them even in San Francisco, a city that takes pride in being fashionably astute and where even the dogs don’t go in for frivolous dressing.

Cute might have gotten you through your first few decades but cute doesn’t age well.

I know we’re just being wicked and they’re just having fun getting into the spirit but adults in kid clothes put themselves at great risk of looking silly. And worse, of being called cute.

This is a concern that goes way beyond holiday dressing. Cute might have gotten you through your first few decades but cute doesn’t age well. After a while it brings only unwelcome attention. When an older person calls a younger person “cute,” it is a compliment. When a younger person calls an older person “cute,” it is condescending. The same with referring to a person of noteworthy vintage as “adorable” or “just darling.” Pretty soon they’ll be patting you on the head and asking, “How are we today?”

This matter of how to dress after a certain age so as not to create a negative image is a favorite subject of mine. I started making a list of fashion warnings when writing about women over age 50. No one is deliberately going for the image of “instant old lady.” Department stores do not have special sections marked “matronly and dowdy.” But mistakes are made.

I started the list out with “friends don’t let friends wear knee-highs.” And added such casualties as cruise-style polyester pantsuits, weak pastels, long denim skirts and matching sweatshirts and sweatpants. I pointed out that women of my generation, blessed with jeans that know how to flatter a mature bottom, dress younger than our mothers and grandmothers. As one over-50 friend colorfully put it, “If we dressed today like some of our mothers did when they were our age we’d look like drag queens.”

Now that I’ve quit my regular day job and joined the ranks of the so-called retired, I’ve expanded my focus on what to wear when you’re no longer required to pull on pantyhose and some serious tailored outfit every morning. Do we now simply approach each day of the week as “Casual Friday?”

My friend Lee in Ohio, who nixes caftans and sensible lace up shoes, counseled, “If someone knows you’re retired by what you’re wearing, you’re wearing the wrong stuff.”

We may no longer have someone else’s dress code to adhere to but people are watching. You don’t want the UPS guy catching you in that old pink bathrobe with the orange juice stains and think all you do is mope around and watch TV.

My artist pal Marylu continues to wears short skirts and buys her glittery T-shirts in the teen section of Macy’s. She vows to forever “dress in an age inappropriate manner.” That’s one way to go. Eccentric, arty and individual certainly beats matronly.

Or go for the shock and awe approach, like the wonderful late Jeanne Claude, the artist wife of Christo, whose startling hair varied from pumpkin to pomegranate and who didn’t look at all retiring. And who no one would have ever dared call cute.