On the Verge of a Century, And Still Looking Ahead

Fairlington Resident's Glass Is Half Full, and It Might Be Port

Peggy Freiband looks a bit like pop singer Posh Spice, her straight white hair trendily cut longer in the front, shorter in the back. She holds it off her face with a jewel-studded bobby pin.

But the Arlington woman has a few years on the British singer. She will turn 100 in November and lives alone -- quite nicely, thank you -- in the three-bedroom garden apartment she has rented in Fairlington since 1984. She shops at Home Depot and can thread a needle without glasses. She recently shortened a pair of her son's trousers.

And Freiband's good genes extend to four siblings. She has sisters who are ages 97 and 93, and brothers 91 and 84.

"We're on a streak," the Brooklyn, N.Y., native said recently as she sat on a balcony overlooking her tidy garden. "I don't really know why. There's nothing really that special about us."

That's highly debatable.

"I say to myself every day, 'Tomorrow something wonderful is going to happen to me,' " Freiband said, her eyes bright under blue eye shadow. "And it does. I've had a wonderful life."

Of course there have been disappointments, because "nothing is perfect in this life." Her husband of 40 years, for example, a psychiatric social worker named Carl Freiband, died in 1981. "I've had a whole life since then," she said.

It's how you take what life dishes out that counts, Freiband said. "I'm not negative at all," she said. "Being positive is such an important part of being a whole person."

After moving to Arlington in her 70s, Freiband worked for 14 years as a first- and second-grade tutor at Abingdon Elementary School. She worked for most of her life, starting out as a legal secretary on Wall Street after learning typing and shorthand after high school.

"My boss took me to the places Wall Street people would go," Freiband recalled. "I didn't even know how to order. He taught me how to go into a restaurant, order and eat." She also worked for the county clerk's office in San Rafael, Calif.

Freiband still lives a full life. She gave up driving at the age of 94 after suffering a blown tire. "God said, 'Peggy, no more driving for you,' " she said. She no longer goes out alone, but she ventures out regularly with family and friends, going to the theater, to the opera and to restaurants.

One recent weekend, she attended a progressive dinner with her son, Michael, 63, stopping at different homes for appetizer, entree and dessert. "He includes me in everything," she said. "His friends treat me like a friend, too. I'm so lucky that way."