It may be no country for old men, but the old predominate anyway.  As for young men, something about the place makes them invisible.  Arizona.  Tempe, to be exact.  My sister and I have set out on a walk.  This has been a most enjoyable weekend visit.  Instead of feeling obliged to dash about the area doing things, we have spent much time at the home of my sister and brother-in-law having good talks.  And now we are out for a stroll.  Me in my semi-portable Read more [...]

With the general sense of neuromuscular time running out, I couldn't resist the opportunity to have a car trip, overland, overnight, over before it began...my brother and sister-in-law being the time-efficient pair they are...to Walla Walla, Washington.  So, it wasn't long before the orthopedic stresses of the road were behind me and I was in this strange little town in the middle of agricultural nowhere.  Walla Walla.  One of those names like Cucamonga no one can utter seriously.  Read more [...]

In an era that tends to over sexualize things, the smiling attentions of the twentysomething barista at Peet's are not to be taken for granted.  Nothing by way of attention from a young woman is ever to be taken for granted at age 64.  Will you still need me, will you still feed me?  Thing is, I do have special needs.  Very special.  The need to have someone carry my brimming café mocha to a distant table, the need to have loving attention, the need to feel needed, particularly Read more [...]

How would I manage?  The essential fear, at least for me.  How would I manage if something happened to my left arm, for example?  This possibility came to me in the middle of the night.  My grip felt weaker.  And wasn't this the way it started at some point in the mid-1990s, the morning I crutched out to my car and found my right arm oddly weakened?  Probably my briefcase gave it away.  In those days, I could hold small bags, laundry, groceries, in the crook of Read more [...]

I can recall both of my father's medical offices.  The first was an odd concrete or even cinderblock structure on our little town's main street.  It had a small lawn in front.  The rooms, for examination and waiting and lab work, stretched back along a corridor.  The linoleum was old and scratched.  My father occupied the place until I was about nine years old.  Then he purchased a house, a big old place, more spacious, remodeled into something much more light and modern.  Read more [...]

In the mornings I set out from San Francisco in my 1968 Plymouth Valiant, the most reliable of cars, eastbound across the Bay Bridge, the most reliable of routes.  I had work, after all.  There was little traffic, my employer had no set starting time.  So with no pressure, I headed up Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue and pulled directly into what was almost always an empty parking space right in front of the Center for Independent Living.  I turned off the engine.  The car clicked Read more [...]