Because showing up matters “I love funerals!” said no one ever I doubt even morticians say that. At least, not out loud. For the rest of us, there is no “fun” in funerals. That holds true even when they’re called something else, like “memorial” or “celebration of life.” However they’re presented, they always mean the same thing: somebody died. And that, in almost every case, is a bummer.  Also, it makes us very, very uncomfortable, because death.  Mortality. The big finish that’s coming for all of us, someday, somehow. The wall we can’t see over; the horizon we can’t see past.…

I have a weird compulsion My husband enters the room. I close my browser tab He glances at me. “You told me you’d stopped,” he says, and I know he knows what I’ve been doing. “You said you weren’t going to do that again.” I scan Google News as though that’s what I’ve been looking at all along, but I’m not fooling anyone. “I didn’t say never again,” I say, my eyes on my screen. “I said not until we got back from our trip.” I try to keep the guilt out of my voice, but it’s there. I sense his…

Popular trends I’m delighted will skip me I have not taken up residence on the dustheap of history Not yet, not by a long shot. In certain dimensions of life, I’m just getting started. As a confirmed and happy late bloomer, I aim to be the floral centerpiece nobody can overlook.  One discovery of aging is that there are actually few things to which the phrase, “I’m too old for that” applies.  It’s true that it’s too late for me to embark on a career as an opera singer, ballerina, or tennis pro. This bothers me not at all. I can’t…

Once I would have, but I’m a little wiser now Visiting a foreign country is a lot like being a guest in someone’s home. As a guest, your job is to appreciate the hospitality you’re offered without demanding that things be run or arranged the same way they are at your house. That’s easy enough when it comes to the superficially exotic (inexplicably short beds in a land of tall people, unidentifiable breakfast foods, traffic laws that seem whimsical or entirely absent). But when in the presence of customs that, no matter how much you allow for cultural differences, are…

Nature’s balance is perfect. But brutal The day before I left on a long-planned, dream trip to Kenya, a blogger friend sent me a bon voyage message. In part, it read: Let it change you. Indeed it has, in ways I’m still discovering. A wildlife enthusiast my whole life, a former docent who once led tours at the Los Angeles Zoo, I’d dreamed for decades of seeing the astounding animals of East Africa — especially the large mammals — in their own habitat instead of in captivity.   Now, after two weeks of visiting four major Kenyan game reserves and two of its lakes, traveling…

For my big fat vacation  This won’t be just any vacation.  My husband, my younger son, his wife, and her parents will meet up next week in Nairobi. After a couple of nights to let our internal clocks catch up, the six of us will then embark on a 10-day tour of some of Kenya’s fabled wildlife reserves. I am squeamish about the term “bucket list” but this trip is the realization of a lifelong dream. It’s taken nearly a year to plan, coordinate, and wait for. And now it’s time to start packing. Squee! I’m looking forward to it Which…

As a straight woman of a certain age, you may not find this surprising. But still . . . Having grown up in an era of stupidly rigid norms, I absorbed through my pores the notion that commercial establishments were gendered. Some were targeted toward females — dress shops, obviously, but also shoe stores, fabric stores, and for the most part, grocery stores — while places like hardware stores and anything having to do with automotive repair or maintenance were the domain of men. Of course, there was some crossover, since guys also needed shirts and shoes and food, but to every extent possible,…

Six Reasons I Won’t Date Younger Men To be clear, I don’t want to date anyone, period. I’m happily married to a man my age. Actually, he’s eight months older. That means that for half of every year, he gets to be married to a younger woman. And for six months of each year, I never tire of pointing this out to him. He and I have known each other since we were 19 (I’ll refrain from pointing out that for half that time I was only 18). We were flirty friends in college, but that was it. Then the…

Learning to live past grief: a podcast episode not to miss 1 Whether or not you believe in a soul that survives physical death — some form of consciousness that moves on to another realm of existence, or perhaps diffuses into a higher, unseen plane of the one we already occupy — is a matter of faith or philosophy. No matter how firmly you may be convinced, as I am, that when the curtain drops on our time on Earth’s stage, we go on to play other roles, the fact is that nobody really knows. Except for, maybe, those who…