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There is nothing like a call from a grandchild to make one’s day.  Seeing my grandson Grady’s photo on my phone, calling from Wash U in St. Louis immediately lifted my (already pretty high) spirits. But here’s what knocked my socks off.  The reading assignment by Robert Dahl for his government class was the same…

Enough already!   It’s been a long time since a winter with lots of New England snow, and I get the need for a reminder. However, I am ready to go bootless. The other day, when walking outside after the sun made an appearance, my companion tripped as she stepped over some snow left at…

“Mansplaining” is a new word to me, but not a new idea. It is defined as “the act of a man condescendingly or patronizingly explaining something to a woman, often assuming she has less knowledge or competence on the topic, even if she is an expert. Rooted in gender inequality, this behavior involves unrequested, overconfident,…

At 80-something, birthdays are a gift, if you are lucky enough to still have them.  I had no expectations about my earlier-this-week birthday but it was lovely, including phone calls, texts, flowers, my class, a walk, and a total of 12,226 steps. On birthdays, one tends to think of past birthdays—and some really are memorable,…

The other day I dropped my take-out-lunch salad, depositing the full container of salad and its white salad dressing all over my black shoes (and the floor), demonstrating a spectacular amount of clumsiness. The next morning, I decided that polishing the shoes might be a good idea. I managed to figure out where my in-recent-memory-untouched…

Growing up, there were plenty of kids on my street for after dinner hide and seek or capture the flag games, daylight permitting. However, I was often the first to leave because I had “things to do” (whatever that meant). Seven decades later, I find myself without “things to do” sometimes. Yesterday when my every…

On Thursday, I said my final good-bye to my former home. It’s now 14 months since we residents of Riverview were told that our 1960’s-built, but now unsafe building would have to come down.  And the process has been slow until very recently.  On Thursday, however from as close as I could get (the property…

About one-third of the residents in my independent living facility are male. That’s understandable since women tend to live longer.  But what I have noticed is that when I am around the male residents, they do most of the talking.  And most of them don’t ask anything about me. I think approximately zero male residents…

You’ve probably noticed that when you are out to dinner with friends, the topic of other restaurant meals is a common one.  So it is with snowstorms.  As New England wrestles with the first major snow in four years, what are we talking about? Well, there was the snowstorm of 1978, when then governor of…

Like so many 80-somethings, my last week included two medical appointments—taking up the better part of two days.  My “wellness visit” was mostly a chat with my primary care physician and some tests that he ordered.. I’ve received my healthcare for more than 50 years from the same organization, but with four different primary care…