A couple of years ago while consciously thinking about how to help myself grow old, I realized that it was really important to me to keep learning. This was partly recognition that learning had something to do with my brain health, and that I would need my brain when my legs were already worn […]
Continue reading
Retirement communities are not all alike. Before making a choice about where to live, you must understand the basic options, how they differ and how these differences affect your lifestyle. The question is: What kind of living situation do you want? I am writing this just after a disturbing experience. The woman I chose to […]
Continue reading
The First Question Posted on May 25, 2021 by frances0615@att.net July 1, 2021 The obvious first question that must be asked when we are facing the question of where to live when we are old is simple: Where will I be safe? I have known that for a long time. But a few days ago […]
Continue reading
If you are getting old and know it and thinking to move yourself to an independent living/assisted care home, you are faced with more questions than you faced when planning your fancy wedding. For instance, to drive or not to drive. In other words, to take your car to the retirement home or not. […]
Continue reading
This morning, thinking again about a lovely event I attended last week, I realized another perk of living a long life: you get to see your children retire. You might even get to sit and listen while people you don’t know talk about them and their accomplishments. You get to listen to them as […]
Continue reading
I went to church on Sunday afternoon in a park. I think now we should do this once in a while, after we go back to meeting with walls around us. It was the Sunday after Easter, which I discover is called “low Sunday,” in some churches, because it is always attended by a small […]
Continue reading
Four birds sat in a tree. Three of them decided to fly. How many were left in the tree? (A small math problem taken from a Lebanese friend’s fb page this morning.) But you wanted to hear about that storm in Texas. It was 1985. Our friend Maria Daoud had come home with us […]
Continue reading
Monday had a special feeling from the beginning. This was the day we were getting vaccinated, all of us here, residents and staff, except for the energetic young mother who cleans my apartment on Tuesdays and Charlie down the hall who limps every step of the miles he walks up and down the halls every […]
Continue reading
What You May Learn If you were compulsive before you came, you will be compulsive when you open your suitcases in the retirement center. Determination to make these rooms feel like home instead of a hotel will lead to the recurrence of the back pain that has already turned you into a drug addict. The […]
Continue reading
I never expected to be where I am right now. I do, however, remember noticing that sometimes old age advances in sudden events. A woman is 91 and well and active; she falls and breaks a hip, and it is the beginning of the end. Because she can’t walk, she loses respiratory health and […]
Continue reading