I spent second-grade in the Potter School for sick and frail kids, and by the end of the year, I thought it had been good for me. Taxis took me to and from school, and the cabbies I liked were the guys who let me ride in front so that I could see out and […]
Author: Aging Time Bomb
Second Grade Tryout
Fresh Air Education I was six-years-old in 1950 when a doctor thought it could be good for me to attend a special Indianapolis school for kids who had trouble staying healthy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there, but I was a kid who tried her best to please, so if I could figure out […]
Stacking Points with In-laws
We all can use a sure-fire way to please our in-laws. As I got ready for Thanksgiving, I smiled while I polished the silver and remembered my guaranteed way to please my mother-in-law, Alice. Contrary to common stereotypes, my husband, Michael, didn’t marry a woman who is anything like dear mom. Alice’s household was always […]
Five Globs of Clay
Most of us want to avoid memory care. It’s typically not a place to enjoy enlightenment, but with help from five little globs of clay, it was the place where my mother found peace. Mom was from a generation of women who often lacked straightforward power in their lives, so they maneuvered. When reality didn’t match […]
Flashy Jeans
Most people outgrow dressing to please their mothers, but not me. I was old and not very wise, but I was smart enough to know that packaging myself well made my mother happy. That was especially true if I hoped to get some information about the secret that she was keeping hidden from me. As I […]
How Did This Happen?
It wasn’t a crack in Mom’s façade, just a tiny fissure that age and warmth made too worn to hold all its secrets. Then, when I didn’t expect it, a fraction of a mystery oozed out for me to see. And it began to change me. I had gone to visit Mom in the memory care […]
Old Age Hitchhiking
As we age, we fade. It may be unwelcome, but it isn’t a surprise. Along the way to kaput, most of us want to remain true to our values. As health, mental capacity or whatever escapes our grasp, we want to live well, or correctly, or faithfully, or whatever distills the essence of our best […]
Rhinotillexomania?
After taking over two years off, I decided I was ready to show up at a Memoir class again. Somehow I feel compelled to write about my life and some incomprehensible decision-making that affected all those who I love. But, without the structure of a class, I could easily find better things to do than to […]
1,008 Steps of Compulsion
Sunday is the end of my Fitbit week, and this morning I looked at my record of steps for the week and noticed that I could push my little step count into six digits. That would be a personal record since my kids gave me a FitBit nine months ago. A lot has happened in […]
My Current Job
I have a new job. It is called being old, and it is a full-time position. Degeneration and decrepitude contribute to the time consumed by aging, but sometimes it is just an issue of being born during a much earlier era. Today I tried to figure out why my calendar doesn’t sync between my phone and […]