Aging
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THUMBS UP!!!
When I first started driving, Granny cautioned me NOT to pick up hitchhikers. “You just never know,” she warned. I disobeyed her, but only once. That day, I was feeling pretty independent behind the wheel of my stick-shift, Chevy Nova, clunker when I saw a guy with his thumb out on the highway. No dummy… Read more
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YOU JUST NEVER KNOW
Bob and Joe are about as unlikely a pair as a cowboy boot and a Ked’s sneaker. Yet every morning they hold court at the local Starbucks. As customers dash in and out, there is a continual stream of “Mornin’ Bob.” “Hey there, Joe.” “How you guys this mornin?” Each recognition makes Bob puff his… Read more
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HERE’S TO THE ‘OLD’ NEW YEAR
New Year’s Eve finds me sitting alone in an old house dress with rolled up socks and the dog curled at my left hip. As I reflect on the ‘old’ year passing in my final blog for 2011, firecrackers pop in the distance. My teenagers are off with friends and my husband is long in… Read more
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IT TAKES A LOT OF NERVE
It takes a lot of nerve to steal from someone but it takes even more to give what you’ve stolen back. Both scenarios occurred to an 83 year-old friend of mine yesterday. She arrived at the pool as she has, “for the last 40 years,” with her purse stuffed inside of her gym bag. She… Read more
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PUT ON THE HAT
A half, bent over, old man was moving very slowly in front of me as I walked to the gym this morning. Every, single step he took was arduous, deliberate and pained me to watch. Even though my own step these days lacks some of its’ old spunk, I slowed my pace. He was working… Read more
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TIME CHANGES EVERYTHING
Everywhere you go nowadays you see ‘kids’ taking care of their elderly parents. That wasn’t the case when I wrote, “Kissing Tomatoes,” 10 years ago. At the time, publishers said, “Love the writing but no one will buy it. Who cares about Alzheimer’s?” Well, time changes everything. Just today, the woman in front of me… Read more
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in
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LOOK AROUND
Know why I like old people so much? They look like themSELVES. There’s no airbrushing. What you see is who they ARE. The beauty of age is that time has written in everything exactly as you lived it, line by line. If you were a joyful person, your face will be etched in tiny, smile… Read more
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SHHH!! DON’T TELL!!
While rinsing the chlorine off this morning in the YMCA shower, a gaggle of giggling little girls squeezed altogether in the open stall next to me. Although several others were open, they chose to rinse off together. Like spies on a secret mission, they peeked out from behind their vinyl curtain as if to be… Read more
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WALK LIKE A MAN!
My husband ruptured a disc in his back several weeks ago. Despite the many pain medications his doctor has proffered, he is still in agony and barely able to navigate from bedroom to kitchen. So, on the eve of our 31st anniversary, I drove to purchase him a cane. As I parked at Walgreens,… Read more
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by
in
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ONE IN TEN
How dare TIME magazine announce: “Alzheimer’s: At last, some progress against the most stubborn disease.” Imagine my disappointment to read merely the same old stuff: It’s hereditary. No drug cures it. Some have side effects worse than the disease itself. We still spend 5 billion a year on cancer research and only 500 million a… Read more
AGEFULLY AGING 