Senior Mama

Being a senior mama, I’ve stuffed decades of family memories into my cluttered brain. Most are vague, like old, uncaptioned photos in a shoebox, nameless and slowly fading. A few…

For Lent this year I’m giving up sleep. This was not a deliberate choice. It was thrust upon me last month—upon all of us—by the sudden death of Sally, our…

Being a senior mama, I qualify for all those dubious privileges of advancing age that our society offers. Senior coffee at McDonalds. Senior Discount Day at the grocery store on…

I have never been a dog person. I like the idea of them well enough, but in the course of raising nine kids I’d never before made time in my…

Tony, who is 31 years old, doesn’t occupy time and space in the same way we do. In his world, there is only now, which is both a place and…

This ballooning is called lymphedema. I will learn ways to control it, but the damage is permanent. I’ll need to ignore the stares and questions, manage the pain of swollen…

I picked my moments carefully and delivered bits of treatment trivia with a deliberate air of nonchalance. “This is good medicine,” I told them regarding the twelve weeks of chemotherapy…

I awaken in a dimly lit room. Not for a moment do I wonder where I am or what I’m doing here, or even why there are plastic tubes in…

The phone call heralding my old age came shortly before my 56th birthday. My husband Bob was out running errands with the kids when the surgeon called. She’d want to…