Just don't say I'm elderly I know it’s silly. It’s just a word. But it hit me like a shock of cold water when a doctor described me as elderly in a message summarizing a recent visit with him. Patient is a healthy-appearing elderly woman, he wrote as a prelude to the specifics of why I was … [Read more...] about Call Me Ma’am. Tell Me I’m in My Golden Years—
Anything Is Possible
Or Is it? Back in 2013 Diana Nyad accomplished something no other long-distance swimmer had even tried. She swam from Cuba to the U.S, without a shark cage. It was her fifth attempt to negotiate the 110 miles with its manifest risk of sharks and deadly jellyfish. She was 64 years old. … [Read more...] about Anything Is Possible
Need a Good Cry? How about some tear-water tea?
The other day I had a yearning, very specific in its musical nature. I wanted/needed to hear “Dance Me to the End of Love,” à la Leonard Cohen when he first recorded it. Maybe not an anthem song in the way “Hallelujah” is, but there was every good reason that the set list of his final concert … [Read more...] about Need a Good Cry? How about some tear-water tea?
Autumn Light
It’s late August, the time when leaves have begun to lose their vibrancy. Some are turning, hints of red and yellow. The shift in daylight, ever so subtle since the summer solstice, renders sunset noticeably earlier. Back-to-school memories kick in. The smell of a new briefcase, crisp lined … [Read more...] about Autumn Light
Letting Go
The other day I became obsessed with finding two books I could not easily locate. It was a reference to one of them—The Family of Man—in Sally Mann’s wonderful memoir that set me on my mission. The other book, To Be Nobody Else, bears a connection in my mind to The … [Read more...] about Letting Go
