September 20, 2021 Onlookers might not know this about me, but I have a fairly active compliant streak in my being, as befits the eldest daughter in a 1950s vintage Catholic family. We didn’t look at all like the TV commercial families, but God knows we tried. So when Erickson …
Most of my life – – all of my life so far, actually – – I have been – – am – – painfully and exceedingly shy. As an introverted feeling intuitive perceiver, my inner place occupies so much of my attention that I often miss concrete facts and details. …
“Where are you safest, Maggie? Helping others? Teaching?” Jim __ I was rather much up a creek without a paddle, as the saying goes, with this week’s writing group prompt. I did have my hearing aids in, and I was very much paying attention, but I could not “get” one …
If I could just listen… October 1, 2021 Like a growing number of elders these days, I have chosen to live in a retirement community. We are an active community. The members all have vocationally or avocationally dedicated their lives and resources to social justice and the environment as a …
October 8, 2021 Every family has its own emotional tasks to work out. I suspect that when those are not approached fairly openly in some way, either in conversation or by ritual, the tasks are divided up among the members who then deal with them separately, and each in their …
September 25, 2021 “Well, good weather, bad weather, t’aint very choice, but I always manage to find something to say.” (Ma Gibbs in Our Town. Thornton Wilder Way back when I was teaching at Duke, I had a string of major surgeries twice in one year, each requiring six weeks …
10/16/21 For six or seven years, I have been a regular musician for the adult choir at the Saturday evening mass at my local Catholic Church. The church is proud of its size – – 5000 families – – and it was only by wedging myself into the adult choir …
God was certainly smiling on me when I moved to New York City to work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Although my time, money, and the list of available apartments were all short, I managed to walk into an opening on a block straight out of “A Tree Grows …
Elderhood: at first blush, I’m tempted to write about the pleasures of wisdom, or to be more accurate, the pleasures of occasionally being thought wise. And then Reality moves in and takes a seat atop my computer monitor. “Get serious,” he chides. “Remember this morning, when you were figuring out …
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been drowning. While I’ve been dealing with the discomfort of a mask on my face, the restraint of staying at home, the danger of viruses in the air we breathe, the surfaces we touch, the hands we shake, George Floyd was dealing with the …
