Disclaimer: I am not a professional in psychiatry, and my information is several decades old. That being said… Long ago and far away, I did editorial work for a psychiatrist whose specialty was early childhood depression. Given that my degree is in Theatre, and the sort of writing I do is mostly resolutely fictional, this might seem like a bad match, but Paul was not a native English speaker (his first two languages were Arabic and Spanish), and what he wanted me to do was help him draft articles, and… Read more “Do You Know Any 3-Year-Olds That are Criminal or National Security Threats to the United States?” →
My mother developed glaucoma in her early 40s (discovered when my brother sat on her glasses, necessitating an eye exam) and, because it was discovered early, the worst that accrued… Read more Taking Nothing for Granted →
This photo was taken when Emily, the household dog, was a spry young animal of four or five: she is vigilantly looking out on our street, watching for skateboarders or other dogs. Skateboarders are her particular abhorrence. These days Em doesn’t stand in the window surveilling. Her hearing is not so great, her eyesight’s iffy, and more than that, her knees are in bad shape. When she was about six she tore the right ACL and required surgery (and six weeks of tranquilizers so she would hold still and heal),… Read more Can You Wear the Bottoms of Your Trousers Rolled When You Don’t Wear Trousers? →
I really am a simple soul. In December I was given a Fitbit for my birthday. I love it. I may, in fact, have gone a little off the deep… Read more My Electronic Overlord →
I use the phrase “Perfect is the Enemy of Good” a lot, reminding myself that retooling a sentence or a paragraph can mash all the spontaneity and beauty right out… Read more Perfect is the Enemy of Wonderful →
Back in the olden days, when I was 13 and we moved from Greenwich Village to rural Massachusetts, and long-distance phone calls were expensive–particularly calls made during the day–the way… Read more Being in Touch →
My father made it to almost-98, sharp as a tack the whole time (as near as I can tell, all his very long-lived siblings did except for the youngest one, who had some sort of dementia in the last few years of her life). My mother died relatively young, but was reasonably sharp. However, my father’s mother (seen left) also had dementia for as long as I knew her (I was 14 when she died, and felt deeply swindled by fate, listening to all the stories about a Grannie Annie… Read more Creak, Memory →
I was thirteen when we moved from New York City to Sheffield, Massachusetts. There were many striking differences, but one of the big ones? Transportation. Unbeknownst to my mother, I had been secretly taking the subway to school in the mornings (this meant an additional 15 minutes of sleep, for the bargain price of ten cents a day…yeah, it was a while ago). In the mornings I would run to the IRT station and jam myself and my armload of textbooks in among a zillion of my fellow citizens (this… Read more I Was Raised in a Barn: Cars →
Madeleine Robins 