The history of one’s family is a tricky business as it tends to be told through the lens of those who follow. It may be celebrated for the wrong reasons, be ignored completely, or in some cases changed beyond recognition. 

My desk is inherited from my grandfather, my grandmother having bought it for him in 1955 when it was already an antique.  I have no idea how old it is, but the leather top is intact, and the wood burnished to an aged gloss, wear showing around the drawer handles where many hands over many years have pulled them open and shut.

A great many things have changed since my youth, but some things, regrettably, remain unchanged.  This was brought home to me at a recent local performance of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. 

I am getting very good at waiting. This is not some wonderful character trait for which I am to be admired, but is simply due to my stage in life.

Many years ago, my grandfather retired to his garden in Northern California. He had put himself through college working 40 hours a week as a gardener, and it had engendered a life-long interest in this activity.

One of the pleasures of being a certain age is that alarm clocks do not rule my life anymore.  I seldom wake up to an alarm, and then only for a special event or to get up in time for a flight somewhere.  Otherwise, I sleep until I wake up.

At my age words are now taking on an interesting twist. I do not understand whole conversations that my grandchildren are having. Over the years I have made it through sick (but one is not ill), baaad (but it is really good), and wicked (not evil but great.)

The British and their former empire have a name for the day after Christmas.  I have long thought Americans needed a name for the 26th, as it marks the end of what many find a season rife with expectations hard to fulfill.

I love this picture.

At this time of year, we celebrate the birth of a baby who grew up to change the world.  Painting upon painting has been created, song upon song have been sung about this event.  We have firmly fixed in our minds the picture of a small, innocent human ensconced in a straw filled manger.

We do not live in an over fifty-five community officially, but it might as well be. All our neighbors have gray hair and the only children in evidence are visiting grandchildren.

I have recently realized that our lives are lived in a series of brackets.  These are a series of befores and afters; before the first job after the last job, being single then being married, before the baby then after the last one leaves home, before that move then after that move.  But one bracket that I am in the middle of just occurred to me the other day --- before the car and after the car

One Thanksgiving, a number of years ago, I found myself in a foreign country where this holiday was unknown and uncelebrated.

I am probably one of the last people on earth that knows more about soup and how to eat it than is necessary. I even have silver flat ware from my grandmother that includes two kinds of soup spoons --- one for cream soups and one for clear soups. And not only are the spoons different, but the bowls from which those soups are eaten are different too.

I have spent most of my life watching carefully as the tide slowly went out. I have watched for my children's safety, analyzed their friends, helped with school work, worried about their goals, and watched them get married and start families of their own.

This rather hackneyed literary phrase has suddenly taken on new meaning for me. I was watching TV the other day when a picture of a walled city in Europe came up on the screen. I found myself, a few moments later, returning to the show I had been watching. But for a few moments I had been lost.

Absentee ballots were my voting lifeline for many years. Never once in all the years I put that ballot in the mailbox, did I think that the vote would not be counted or that the priveledge of participating in our precious voting system would be denied to me.

I recently visited an old and valued friend whom I have known for more years than I can count. We knew each other when our children were babies and now those babies have children that are heading off to college.

From Diogenes wandering about ancient Greece with his lamp looking for one honest man to the current furor over fake news, the search for truth has always been central to our human condition.  I ran into this recently when I came across a quote from Robert Frost that is all over the internet.  The quote is “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”  This struck me as a wonderful quote to use in the discussion of what it means to be older. 

I am beginning to think I am like an old computer. You know the one. It has the baby pictures of your college student on it, and never was quite the same after you spilled coffee on it and dropped it on the concrete floor at the airport.