When I Grow Too Old to Dream
When I Grow Too Old to Dream We have been gay, going our wayLife has been beautiful, we have been youngAfter you’ve gone, life will go onLike an old song we have sung When I…
Category: Advancing Years
Lament
I come to this winter season—this icy interlude of cold and snow and thin light–lonely. I am struck by the yawning emptinesses once filled by friends and family and colleagues who are now gone. This…
Drawing the Line
I was in college, but likely on holiday. Mother and Daddy and I were driving home from somewhere—the Dreshers maybe. I considered myself grown up and wise but was still in the backseat of the…
Safely Gathered In
Two posts ago, I jumped the gun with my essay on fighting to accept winter. Since then, the universe has served up an uncommonly lovely fall. We have had flickers of frost some mornings. We…
Voir Dire
I spent the lion’s share of my 76th birthday in Helena’s Justice Court. No, I was not the scofflaw. I was on jury duty—for which I managed to be selected out of something like 30…
An App for This Age
Awhile back, I downloaded the phone app “We Croak.” It’s based on a Bhutanese belief that to live fully we must contemplate death often. Become its friend. Five times daily at random moments the app…
A Prescription for Our Fears
Grandma Sherfy was my current age—75—in 1963. That year, I was a cocky high school junior—finding my bearings, myself, my prowess. Aunt Blanche would die in November—breast cancer. So would President Kennedy. We were catching…
Imprints
At the edge of sleep, Just as Simon’s paw reaches under the covers for my cheek, I wake at home. The corner of North Ash and Earl, in McPherson. The brick bungalow that my dad…
In Memoriam
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that.So are we all. James Baldwin I once read obits more carefully, for the stories they told….
Wanting
This early spring, I stretched to the far side of my memory, Stalking riches: the pure gold of so many moments that life has given me; The uncanny, dazzling opportunities that I never saw coming…