Will the Year Be New?

A new year is upon us, while I am still looking back. Just a few months ago, in the laundry room, I met a new resident of the assisted care community. She was beautiful, her eyes such a friendly blue, her gray hair lying in soft waves, her smile lighting up that drab little room. […]

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Is Assisted Care the Place to Spend Flu Season?

Before I came to live in the retirement community, I was in my house alone a great deal of the time. I slept alone, ate alone, watched television alone, made messes and cleaned them up alone, walked alone outdoors in the afternoons. Because of covid the fewer people I saw up-close, the safer I was. […]

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Speaking of Storms

Four birds sat in a tree. Three of them decided to fly. How many were left in the tree? (A small math problem taken from a Lebanese friend’s fb page this morning.)   But you wanted to hear about that storm in Texas. It was 1985. Our friend Maria Daoud had come home with us […]

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September Trials

  I never expected to be where I am right now. I do, however, remember noticing that sometimes old age advances in sudden events. A woman is 91 and well and active; she falls and breaks a hip, and it is the beginning of the end. Because she can’t walk, she loses respiratory health and […]

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Growing in the COVID-19 Pandemic

One thing some of us have more of because of the COVID-19 pandemic is time to think. And the daily news provides us with ample substance for thought.       Thus I have been thinking about many scattered topics. Some of them relate to things I said to myself (and confessed in my book) […]

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Why We All Need One Another

  Relationships and Our Needs   In this day of a global pandemic, many people of all ages, especially those who live alone, are faced with some of the experiences large numbers of older people have known for years. If we had a dozen single-word descriptors of aging and we took a poll of the […]

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Getting Lost (and found)

A sweet woman named Lois lived across the street from us for about ten years. She and I used to take our afternoon walk together, going all the way to the end of our road where there was a closed gate. She taught me that you have to touch the gate or you can’t claim […]

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Comparisons

Two or three days ago I got a note from someone who had just finished reading Helping Yourself Grow Old. She wrote: “What you said about dealing with old age, works too in dealing with a pandemic.” Really? I guess I hadn’t thought of that. But it’s reasonable, because old age is definitely a pandemic. […]

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