Retirement
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How Not to Ruin a Perfectly Good Retirement
Ted and Joan sit on their immaculately maintained backyard deck, wearing their designer shades and sun hats and sipping iced tea from tall frosted glasses. Lounging on the kind of posh outdoor furniture featured in home and garden magazines, they watch as a team of landscapers re-mulches their flowerbeds, prunes their trees, manicures their lush Continue reading
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The Gentle Art of Waving to Neighbors
Morning arrives at Lakeside Manors. I step into my athletic shoes, put on my sunglasses, and fail, as I often do, to comb my hair. Then I’m out my front door for a vigorous walk before I start my day. On the streets surrounding my house, I see others. Some, like me, are out for Continue reading
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The Wizard of Awe
I have lived my entire life in the grip of fear. When artist Georgia O’Keeffe, the Mother of American Modernism, the woman whose decades-long career would transcend conventional art movements of her time, made this startling statement in 1938, I like to imagine that she spoke across time and space directly to me. I’ve been Continue reading
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Gear Up, Slow Down, or Cruise? My Quest for a Meaningful Retirement
I’m sitting in the community room at the public library. Beside me to my left: a seventy-three-year-old man whose wife is in a hospice unit facing end-of-life decisions. To my right: a sixty-four-year-old woman, still working but looking ahead to life beyond her career. We are at the library for an information session on Medicare. Continue reading
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What Anne Lamott Said to Me (Sort of)
One of the advantages of living near Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the opportunity to be part of the thriving literary community that revolves around the University of Michigan’s prestigious Zell Writers’ Program. When I moved here twelve years ago, I declared that I had landed in Writer Heaven. One of Ann Arbor’s gems (in the Continue reading
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Apology to Mature Women Everywhere
Several years ago, I read Abigail Thomas’s memoir Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life. A member of my writing group at the time recommended the book, explaining that Thomas offers snapshots from a life in chapters that are often less than a page long and saying that she thought I might like it. I Continue reading
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