The Middle Ages

Dowdy with Dust I’ve lived in my house going on twenty-seven years, long enough that some everyday objects had become dull and downright dowdy with dust. Dust accrues, and in the last few years, I recognized how it had started to fill in the pleats of the lampshades on what I call “the new lamps,” […]

I can brush my teeth with my eyes closed, and I can brush my teeth while standing on one leg, but brushing my teeth with my eyes closed while standing on one leg is proving a challenge. Why, you might ask, would I even try? It was my assignment on Day Two of The New […]

The average age at our Thanksgiving table plummeted from 73 last year to 29 this. That’s a whopping drop of forty-four years – an entire generation, and then some. We had seventeen guests both years, though obviously not the same ones. Becoming an Elder Last year, my then ninety-two year old father was still with […]

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant is New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s graphic memoir about caring for her elderly parents as they resisted the help that they needed and that their middle-aged daughter was at initially clueless to provide. Providing that care requires some tricky role-reversal, and Chast has a hard time convincing her […]

LESSONS IN GRIEF While my Dad was alive and in decline, I grieved for the man he used to be. He mostly accepted his limitations, while I was often irritated by them. Now I wish I’d acknowledged how plucky he was in his old age, even as his hearing diminished, his eyesight faded, his memory […]