There is both beauty and tragedy in the fact that, for the most part, we tend to fall in love with people our own age. We have the same social memories, the same cultural touchstones, and often the same general values. And there is something sweet about growing old together, seeing the power of aging […]
Continue ReadingGrowing up, there was an older woman who lived down the street from me. Her name was Jane, and she was probably the only adult I ever called by her first name when I was a child. She was older in that faded glamour sort of way, and to me, she seemed mysterious—even exotic. This […]
Continue ReadingThere is a weight to labor, and a weight to love. There is a physical heaviness in helping someone out of bed, in walking them together-stepped to the bathroom, in changing them, in helping them eat. There is even a soft weight in stroking their hair as they fall asleep, and a soul’s weight in […]
Continue ReadingThink of how many movies and TV shows have a joke, or a series of jokes, where an older adult wants to have fun, or swears, or goes out on a date. It’s usually met with a wisecrack putting them back in their place, or even general shock. It’s almost always played for laughs. The […]
Continue ReadingLaurel remembers that the air her kids ran around in was much cleaner and fresher than the air her grandkids now breathe in deeply as they play. Laurel has lived in the Bay Area most of her life, first in San Francisco and now in Marin. When she was a teenager, she was diagnosed with […]
Continue ReadingWhen Ken looks back on his life, a few things stand out, and define him. One is his heritage. Growing up in the Fruitvale neighborhood, he’s fiercely proud of his Latino roots and his culture. But then there’s also the two dominant institutions of his life: the US Navy and Oakland public schools. He spent […]
Continue ReadingIt’s hard to overestimate the enormous gains of the LGBTQ movement over the last two decades. Once thought unthinkable, marriage rights have been expanded nationwide. Bigotry is shunned, instead of accepted. And while incivility and indecency are retrenching, and the victories of the last 20 years are suddenly uncertain, the battlefield has shifted—it’s much more […]
Continue ReadingDanna Faulds writes warm, heartfelt poems about her experiences with yoga, and her personal discoveries of spirituality. “It is a wonder how a simple stretch deepens breath, and an elegantly held pose grows to touch the whole of me.” The beautiful journey that she describes is even more special because there are almost no […]
Continue ReadingWe place enormous faith in medicine. It wasn’t that long ago, really, that people saw surgery as high-minded butchery and medicine as akin to witchcraft. It isn’t hard to see why as we are often told to take some kind of pill or tonic or solution then trust that, unseen in our bodies, things will […]
Continue ReadingPlanning ahead is in many ways a product of imagination. We have to see ourselves unmoored from the present where we live our lives, and take steps to make what seems like an impossibility happen. There are, of course, a million ways that fate or chance can whirlwind our lives in any careening direction, but […]
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