Meditations on the Recent College Graduate at Your House

Oh, yes!  All your years as a mother — all the cunning you’ve developed, the subtle hints, the sneaky machinations — have led to this moment.  One of your children has graduated from college.

And it’s time for him to get a job.  What can you, his mother, do to speed up this process?  Let me count the ways.

1) Focus on the positive and be generous.  E.g., “Hey, honey!  Why don’t you take the weekend off?  Then you can hit the ground running on Monday.”

2) You know the life you want?  Well, you have to envision it out loud.  Raised voices or shouting may be necessary, at times.  For instance, “You know, this fall — after you’ve been working fulltime for a few months — you’ll probably want to get your own credit card.”

3) Keep on envisioning that ideal life.  Keep on shouting.  For example, statements such as, “We know how you hate sponging off your parents and not being independent” can be quite effective, even when evidence to the contrary is all around you and may, in fact, be lying on the couch where it is watching Sopranos re-runs on TV.

4)  Don’t make obvious comparisons (too pushy!), but don’t shy away from frequent mentions about what other kids of a similar age and educational level are doing — particularly when they’re already gainfully employed.  “I know Jeff’s parents must be so proud that he’s got a great job.  Yes, Jeff, the one you always thought was such a big loser in high school.  He seems to have turned out quite well.  Did I mention how proud his parents must be?”

5) References to how much you and your spouse have spent on college tuition and living expenses over the past four years are unseemly for at least the first few weeks of job-hunting.  After that, all’s fair in love, war and parental anxieties.

6) Hide any subversive reading material that highlights recent sociological info showing that this generation of kids — the Millennials — are now called Emerging Adults and won’t be financially or emotionally independent till they’re 30.  Any kind of dangerous filth like that needs to be shredded as soon as possible.

7) If you’re religious, pray for the economy to get better.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker) 

Sounds in the Waiting Room

So there I was, waiting for my husband to get a minor surgical procedure.  I’d come prepared — with editing work, part of the weekend newspaper, a magazine or two.

Several feet to my left in the waiting room, a TV blared.  It wasn’t on Fox, or I might have bashed the screen in.  But it was some other, less objectionable station where they pay people to talk constantly, even when there’s really nothing to talk about.  Then they repeat themselves for several hours.  (What am I complaining about?  I should be so lucky to get paid to constantly repeat myself.)

But, anyway.  I stepped up to the receptionist and made a subversive suggestion.

“Do you mind if I turn off the TV?” I asked.

She looked a little alarmed and craned her neck around.  There was only one other person in the waiting room, a guy who was reading a magazine.  “I guess it would be OK,” the receptionist said doubtfully.

I shut off the TV, feeling that wonderful relief that happens when the noise vanishes — like it does when you turn off a vacuum cleaner.  It reminded me of the last time I turned off the TV in the waiting room at a car place.  Salespeople wandered through the room, staring at the empty screen, looking a little lost.  I almost felt guilty.  (What had I done to those poor people?)  But not very.

But now, I settled in and did my editing, then read my newspaper.  I ended up talking with another two people who were also waiting for their spouses to get the same unnamed surgical procedure and we ended up in a discussion about whether men or women are bigger babies when it comes to pain.  (Men are, the three of us — two female, one male — agreed.)  It was fun and engaging — and I’m sure we wouldn’t have talked if the TV had been on, dominating everything, sucking our brain cells out through our eyelids and ear canals.

I’m not a snob about TV.  I watch it most days.  But I hate it that people can’t deal with silence or be lost in their own thoughts, that we all need some kind of outside entertainment bombarding us every minute of the day.  If the TV is on, that must mean we’re alive, right?

After we escorted my husband out to the car and he slept the rest of the day, he took his car in to the Prius shop for a warranty check the next day.  There had been several people in the waiting room there, he reported later, and a TV that wasn’t on.  Instead, everybody there was reading a book.

Oh, hell.  Sometimes, in spite of my fears of extreme political correctness and looming SUVs, I begin to think I might be the Prius type myself.  At least they wouldn’t hate me in the waiting room.  I might fit in perfectly.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker)

On The Department of Lost & Found

After writer Allison Winn Scotch lost a close friend to breast cancer, she began a novel to help manage her grief.  The resulting book is The Department of Lost & Found, available at http://www.amazon.com/Department-Lost-Found-Allison-Scotch/dp/006116142X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210713797&sr=8-1.

This is the story of a driven, not always likable young woman whose successful career, life and values are shaken by breast cancer.  As a fellow cancer survivor tells Natalie, the novel’s heroine, “It’s funny, isn’t it?  How the thing that cancer changes the most isn’t your breasts or your hair or anything at all on the outside.  What it changes is everything else instead.”

Scotch’s novel is serious and funny, probing and intuitive.  Her heroine longs for her untouched “old” life till it becomes clear that that life doesn’t exist any longer — and neither does the older version of herself who would have done anything to advance her career.

If the novel falters at all, it’s from wrapping up Natalie’s life too neatly and quickly after she finishes treatment and goes into remission.  This is a time many cancer survivors — including me — find themselves depressed and helpless.  They’ve spent months concentrating on brutal treatments, counting the days till they return to “normal,” when their hair grows out and their scars and radiation burns fade.

Don’t underestimate what a hard time it’s going to be after treatment is over.  I was fortunate enough to have two friends to warn me about that.  Otherwise, I would have been even more bewildered after the rest of the supportive world that had brought casseroles and flowers to my front door moved on, since everything was over and I could be happy and healthy again.

It’s never that easy, quick or uncomplicated.  Difficult as chemo and radiation are, they’re also distractions from fully realizing you’ve had a deadly disease that can return at any time.  That’s the realization that slams you in the face just at the time everybody else is relieved that you’re still alive and healthy and that life can go back to what it was before.  Except you can’t get there from where you are.

Still, Scotch has written a good and valuable novel about how cancer changes your life — and of the odd and lasting benefits a stay in that dark and frightening place can bring.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Old Wedding, New Website

Well, according to Salon.com’s Broadsheet, wedding websites are the latest rage.  Why, I asked myself, did my husband and I miss yet another significant social trend?

Oh, that’s right.  The Internet hadn’t been invented when we got married 35 years ago.

But why quibble?  It’s not too late.  I’ll use this space to recall the small, tasteful (read: cheap and hippie-like) wedding we had in 1972.

WHERE:  It was at the bride’s parents’ house, in the den, in front of the fireplace.  The bride’s father, who never had been mechanically inclined (kind of like the groom, now the bride thinks of it) was ordered to reset the family’s collection of bonging clocks so they wouldn’t make a racket.  Unfortunately, he miscalculated.  During a small period of silence — which was used to replace a prayer, since the bride and groom were both agnostics — one clock began to gong enthusiastically.  It sounded, roughly, like the bell of doom.  Had the bride and groom not been so hungover, they might have heeded the warning.

WHO OFFICIATED:  A minister from a local church who was quite sweet and heavily West Texas-accented.  He had tried, the week earlier, to instruct the bride and groom about making annual lists to chart the progress of their marriage.  Unfortunately, in the years that followed, the minister’s own annual list included a stay in the state penitentiary, after he was convicted of embezzling church funds to support his mistress.

WHO ATTENDED: Mostly family members.  As the groom’s brother mentioned later, he only learned he was the best man at the wedding after reading it in the newspaper.  Almost nobody cried, except for the groom’s mother, who was overcome with grief at the point of no return.

WHAT THE BRIDE WORE: A pink dress.  Many in attendance probably thought the rather loose dress served to mask an advanced pregnancy.

WHAT THE GROOM WORE: Nobody remembers.

WHERE THEY HONEYMOONED: At a cheap, West Texas motel.  The all-inclusive night included free breakfast the next day.

HOW THEY MET:  In the high-school band, which is a source of great embarrassment to their children.  “Just don’t tell anybody that,” they plead.

MUSIC DURING THE CEREMONY: Provided by a nice, rather tone-deaf pianist who played both Beethoven and the Beatles to the same rollicking beat.  She was so enthusiastic she had to be begged to quit playing at the reception.

PROPOSAL: Participants strongly suspect illegal substances were involved in this endeavor.  In any event, bent knees were not involved.

WEDDING THEME:  “Well, we’ll just see if it works.”

NOTABLE PRESENTS:  Ashtrays, quiche pans, waffle irons, small checks — all of which were delivered to the lobby of the apartment building where the bride and groom had already lived for six months, claiming they were already a married couple.  The apartment manager, who strongly suspected the couple was behind a series of gallon wine jugs being thrown down the fourth-floor trash chute and crashing loudly on the ground floor, did not appear surprised.  He remained embittered as the couple pulled other occasional, harmless tricks such as signs in the elevator announcing that fat people on the second floor were ineligible to ride the elevator and should take their objections to the manager if they felt offended.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Mother’s Day Thoughts

Today, CNN has a video on its website about the one word people would use to describe their mothers.  It’s at http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/09/mothers.day.ireport/index.html – and the words range from beautiful to humble to unfailing to nuts.

It reminds me of the time, years ago, when my daughter had to come up with a single term to describe me.  I was a little breathless at this point — hoping for something like “witty” or “glamorous” or “brilliant.”  It was none of the above.  “Tenacious,” she told me.

Tenacious?  That lacked a little of the je ne sais quoi, the punch, the chic I was hoping for.  Tenacious?  “You know how you had an article turned down by one place?” she said.  “You didn’t let it stop you.  You sent it somewhere else and got it accepted.  You kept on going.  You’re tenacious.”

Listening to her, I decided being tenacious was better than I’d thought — and probably better than I deserved.  She hadn’t observed all the times I’d ended up in fetal position, whining and moping about one slight or rejection or another.

But this all makes me think of this crazy business of being a mother and how hungry we all are for any droplet of praise or any sign that we’re doing it right.  If we work outside the home, we’re conflicted.  Is day care really all right for our kids?  If we stay at home full time, we’re still conflicted.  Will we ever be able to land a good job again?  In both cases, we’re haunted by the same concerns:  Will our kids turn out all right?  Will they love us, admire us?  Have we been good mothers?

You can talk equality all you want — and God knows, I do, at great and boring length.  But men still don’t torture themselves with the same ferocious doubts about being good fathers.

Mother’s Day makes me think of the most incredible mother I’ve ever known — my dear friend, Donna Ryan.  She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in the early 1990s when she was in her late twenties.  She had three young children, no college degree, little support, except for friends.  All she had was sheer grit and the most incredible reserves of energy I’ve ever seen.

Hodgkin’s is, by and large, the kind of cancer that can be managed or even cured.  But not always.  Donna’s disease recurred again and again.  She went through chemo, bone-marrow transplants, every kind of treatment there was.  Over the years, she went from being a beautiful, statuesque woman to a frail, bent-over figure who hobbled on a cane.

But still she endured.  The last time I talked to her, she’d tracked me down on a business trip.  One of her daughters was doing a book report on a young-adult novel I’d written.  Donna thought she needed to interview me, which she did, a little haltingly.  In the background, I could hear Donna suggesting more and more questions to ask.

Donna’s oldest child, David, came to the hospital dressed in the full regalia of his high-school graduation gown.  She got to see him, got to see that she’d lived to see at least one child graduate from high school.  She died a few days later.

Writing this, I see something I didn’t really expect to see.  I wanted to write about an incredible friend and mother — but I see an example of what being truly “tenacious” can really be, and how I can only hope to be a pale shadow of that.

Happy Mother’s Day to you — to us — all.  Enjoy your children, celebrate your mothers.  Most of them are doing the best job they can.  If you’re a mother yourself, give yourself a break, even if it’s just for a day.  I’ll try to remember that and to remember my friend, Donna.  I hope she can rest in peace, knowing she gave it her all.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker) 

I’d Never Say Tomahto

If your friends are like you, it’s no wonder we ended up hosting a last-minute dinner party with a bunch of people who get all turned inside-out about how you pronounce words.

“What about forte?” John asked.

It depends, somebody else said.  Was he talking about the musical term, which was Italian – or the French word that means your strong point?  The first would be pronounced for-TAY, with a long a.  The second is just enunciated fort.  No second syllable, no vowel sound.  Think Fort Worth.

Yes, but, John kept saying.  “Nobody in the world pronounces the second word that way.  They all mispronounce it as for-TAY.  So how do you pronounce it?”

We don’t pronounce it, most of us said.  That’s because, if we used the word, we’d either pronounce it “fort” and have everybody think we were losers who couldn’t put together a long A sound — or for-TAY, which would pass muster with many people, but which we — and about five other people on the face of the earth — would know is wrong.  So — we ignore the word.  “What’s your strong point?” we might ask, instead.

Similarly, the country Chile.  It used to be pronounced chili.  Then a few Americans went there and came back speaking, very ostentatiously, about chee-LAY.  Which almost always elicited the response, “Oh!  Have you been to chee-LAY, too?  Didn’t you just love it?”

Oh, please.  If you want to play that game and throw around that particular affectation, you might as well pronounce France (short a) as Fraaaahnce (with an ah sound, as they do in both Paris and Par-ee).  I don’t know about you, but I’d find anybody but a French national to be a pompous lout if he went around talking about Fraaaahnce.  I wouldn’t even take the bait and ask him, “Oh!  Have you been to Fraaaahnce, too?”

I once spent about 15 minutes talking to a co-worker about Chile, which I insisted on pronouncing chili and she chee-LAY.  It’s remarkable how long a conversation like that can go on, without either of you pointing out that something strange is going afoot.  But we kept on talking, kept on ignoring it, each intent on her own preferred pronunciation and feeling sorry for the other deluded slob.

All of which usually leads to my own story about going to Chile, which involved a long plane ride next to a young Spanish-speaking woman who was quite nice.  The only problem was, she kept talking to me about “papa” and I got a bit tired of hearing about that.  How can anybody talk about a potato for an entire plane trip? I wondered.  How can anybody get that dazed, surreal glow about a common vegetable?  Was she trying to give me a new recipe or something?

As it turned out, ”papa” has more than one meaning in Spanish and she’d been to see the Pope.  At the end of the flight, we said adios to each other and de(as they say in the airline industry)planed, she to chee-LAY and me to chili.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker) 

Memoirs of an Allergy Sufferer

We moved back to Austin — known variously as the Live Music Capital of the World and the Allergy Capital of the Universe — in 1997.  Coming back, we could always count on people talking about two things:

1) Have you noticed how much Austin has changed?  (This was always commented on in a mournful tone of voice, part of a Chicken Little mantra that Central Texas was going straight to hell in a handbasket.  Republicans!  Californians!  Traffic!  Subdivisions with meaningless Spanish or Olde English names!  It used to be heaven, but now it’s ruined!  Liberty Lunch, Soapcreek, Les Amis!)

2) Allergies.

I thought the woe-is-us growth bitchings were pretty sad.  There’s nothing worse than people who moan about how the past was better, the present stinks and the future promises to be horrific.

But allergies.  I mean, for Christ’s sake.  There’s nothing more boring than people constantly kvetching about their health, I thought, rolling my eyes, especially if it involves repeated mentions of mucus membranes and sinus cavities.  Cover your mouth with a handkerchief and don’t forget to breathe those pollens, hon.  I’ve got better things to think about.

That was then — 11 years ago.  This is now.  Now.  I’ve spent the spring feeling like an evil troll is belting me repeatedly in the head with a sledgehammer, which would account for those days I shuffle around, shedding IQ points like drops of sweat in a sauna, nose tickling, voice hoarse, head bursting.  I pore through the newspaper to find out what’s in the air (oak?  molds?  grasses?).  I compare symptoms with total strangers, finding solace, solidarity, vindication in our common suffering.  Oh, you get headaches, too?  Really bad ones?

I ask everybody from my hairdresser to a pharmacy clerk to neighbors what they suggest as a remedy.  Something at Whole Foods?  Nose irrigation system?  Air purifier?  Allergist?  Shots?  Euthanasia?

Doing this, I see the old me, the judgmental, head-shaking, superior little snot of 11 years ago who mocked the allergies, the complaints, the symptoms, the wasted time, the rather obvious and tedious hypochondria.  Don’t these people have anything better, more interesting to talk about? she wondered.

I can answer her now.  No, they don’t.  And neither do I.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Billy: Thief, Foodie, Friend

From Ellen in Gdynia, Poland: As one who’s consistently had canine companionship for over thirty years, I can say I’ve loved every single mutt (none, by the way, ever thought s/he was “human”, each very much a dog), but the relationship you have with the pet with you through a spouse’s illness, death and your survival is different.  It’s the difference between going home to a vacuum and retaining a touch with life.  And throughout all the fits of rage, storms of tears and loneliness, they are there.  Not necessarily doting or approving, but present when no one else can be. 

Some of us who met via WidowNet with dogs who have likewise met, speculated on what they might communicate to one another about us, their hysterical guardians.  Michelle, deeply attached to her Shaka, suggested the following: 

Shaka: “Does yours do that screaming stuff?”  
 
April: “Yeah, sometimes. I just ignore it now.”  
 
Billy: “But one thing, they give lots of treats when they feel better!”  
 
Shaka: “Yeah, but what about all that crying stuff? It gets old. I mean, if I have to lick one more tear I’ll gag!”  
 
Sophie: “I like the salt!”  
 
Shaka: “Perv!”  
 
Billy: “All that hugging, geesh! I’m not a pillow, for god’s sake!”  
 
Sophie: “I like the squishes!”  
 
April: “Perv!” 

Billy – treats would enter into his imaginary conversation.  A handsome black Lab belonging to Lynda, my British friend, he’s always been a passionate foodie.  Conscious of the Lab’s tendency to overweight in senior years, she’s strived to keep him svelte and succeeded admirably. 

On my first visit to her two years ago, I was very taken by him.  Everyone is.  Scenting a sucker, he positioned himself beside me as we ate, not whining, just eyeing me appealingly. 

“Don’t give him anything,” Lynda said sharply.  “And don’t turn your back on him – he’s a thief!” 

His sly thefts were the subject of first embarrassment, then laughter, when we took a long trip to Northumberland.  Breaking for five minutes at a station to buy drinks, he managed to devour the entire content of a box of treats.  Late at night, relaxing in the tiny pub of our B&B in Berwick, Lynda and I were deep into conversation when she suddenly paused and said, “Where is Billy?”  She raced towards the darkened kitchen, calling.  Billy emerged, licking his lips and grinning.  The following day, she asked the owner, a harassed South African struggling to manage solo in his wife’s absence, whether he was missing any supplies.  He said he wasn’t…however, he told us later that bacon was off the breakfast menu.  Could have sworn he had bought it just the other day and didn’t know what had happened to it.  Lynda and I looked at each other and at Billy.  We knew, all right.   

Some months ago she had a scare.  He ignored his carefully measured breakfast.  Instead of devouring it, wagging his tail throughout as is his custom, he sighed and leaned against her.  Just as she was reaching for the phone to call her veterinarian, she noticed two empty tubs of butter. 

Thieving ways aside, he’s a wonderful animal, so well behaved he’s accepted wherever Lynda goes.  Nothing mawkish about their relationship, but it’s as deep as it gets between human and canine.  Planning to visit me in two weeks, as usual she had no problem finding a place for him to stay.  In fact, there’s always competition.  Her brother dotes on him as well as all her friends.   

As of yesterday, her trip is off.  Billy has tumors, probably malignant.  She is understandably devastated…but not so devastated to elect for desperate measures.  No chemo, no extensive surgery, just life as usual until its quality begins to ebb and pain to set in.  Then it’s the mercy shot.   

If my dog April doesn’t outlive me, I plan to be equally realistic…wondering, as I think about it, why our pets are granted an end of life option we are not. 

Germs and Tap Water

There’s nothing more soul-satisfying than having your deepseated prejudices confirmed.  I’m talking, of course, about germs and plastic bottles of designer water.

First, the germs.  I guess you could say my husband and I have always maintained a pretty loose ship.  I was known as the little slob in my family of origin, always cleaning my room by stashing everything under the bed or talking my little sister into buying it from me.

My mother, a housewife with what Florence King would call a “scrubber” mentality, periodically had long, emotional talks with me about my failures.  I was on track to grow up to be a bad housewife, she’d say sorrowfully.  I’d be just like my paternal grandmother who cleaned up by sweeping debris into drawers.  That was pretty upsetting news to me, so I’d burst into tears and sob about how I was going to improve myself.

Of course, I always reverted to my old ways.  Mother was right.  I’ve never been a housewife, but I’m a terrible housekeeper.

The strange thing is, I managed to marry someone even more slovenly than I am.  Good grief.  I turn out to be the neatnik at our house by sheer default.  It’s mind-boggling, tragic.  Mother would just die if she weren’t dead already.

Naturally, the two chldren we reared into more-or-less adulthood are also slobs, bless their filthy little hearts.  After they were born into our less-than-pristine household and carted off to daycare, my husband and I always reassured each other that the kids were healthy (no earaches!  no tubes in their ears!  hardly any colds!) because we had exposed them to so many germs.

Now, at last, I find there’s scientific corroboration.  Check out http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2276875,00.html to find out how fortunate and healthy children are when they grow up surrounded by germs and, better yet, other germ-infested children in the real world (i.e., day care).  And we thought we were just making ourselves feel good!  (I should add that we do have household help, which has greatly decreased the level of marital squabbles chez nous.)

On to designer water which I, for one, have always felt is quite irritating from the very first days of seeing skinny women (they were always women and they were always skinny, believe me) carting around plastic bottles of Evian and looking smug and snooty.  I’ve now spent years feeling apologetic and proletariat in restaurants because I order tap water — like we live in a Third World country, for God’s sake.  “Perrier is just delicious,” someone told me years ago.  How could she tell?  It’s water.  Water isn’t delicious.  Is it?  Or was I just lacking some level of taste discernment, which might also explain why I don’t like goat cheese, either (another roadblock on the fast route to sophistication, let me assure you).

“Why do you have to drink so much water?” I asked a colleague, a few years ago.  She was always gulping designer water like it was a drug.

She rolled her eyes.  The woman next to us turned around and said, “Because the body is 90 percent water.”

I guess that was supposed to be a good reason, but it didn’t exactly resonate with me.  Assuming the body is already 90% water, why would you want to increase the percentage?  I mean, being post-menopausal and all that, I already spend plenty of time in the bathroom.  But I digress.

So I felt relieved/happy/smug/satisfied to hear all this hoopla about how plastic water bottles are ruining the environment and besides, there’s no real scientific evidence to show you have to drink eight glasses of water a day.

“You know more than you think you do,” the much-reviled Dr. Spock told a generation of parents.  I always loved reading that.  We gave them germs and tap water — and they’ve turned out beautifully.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker)

The Corner of Emergency Repair and Routine Maintenance

Ever since an orthopedic surgeon diagnosed my sore right shoulder as being arthritic, with a torn cartilage, I’ve felt sorry for myself.  Well, the torn cartilage had its merits; at least it showed I wasn’t deluded or a full-blown, whining hypochondriac.

But arthritis!  Does anything scream AGE! like arthritis?  It’s totally lacking in dignity or drama.

“It’s what I suspected,” the surgeon said, nodding his head.  “Arthritis.”  He didn’t add, you old bat — but it hung there in the air.  Like an aging bat.

He suggested a day surgery — a scope, he called it.  Great.  After agreeing to it and signing a bunch of papers about how I won’t sue even if they run over me with a tractor-trailer by mistake, I went to yoga.  There, every busybody in the room demanded to know whether I’d gotten a second opinion.  “You know, surgery can make it worse,” my yoga teacher said.  (Does that count as a second opinion?)

But anyway, aside from the proposed scope and the tractor-trailer and the second opinion I’m probably too lazy and shiftless to get, I’ve got real self-esteem issues going on.  This is one of my first experiences with the deterioration of aging — not counting every time I look in the mirror, I mean.

God.  I used to be like the rest of the world, convinced that self-improvement was just around the corner.  Just a little will and work and resolution — and I, too, would have the body beautiful, the mind well-educated, the personality charming.  I could resolve to be something different and better.  This time, experience to the contrary, it just might work.

Well, hell.  Here I am now, parked at the corner of emergency repair and routine maintenance.  Shut your mouth about self-improvement; I just want to delay the inevitable onslaught and keep what I have for as long as I can.  And I thought arthritis lacked dignity!  The corner of emergency repair and routine maintenance can be — let’s face it — a pretty bleak little dump.  From here you can see — oh! oh!  what’s that?  A funeral home?  No!  False alarm!  My mistake!  It’s just a hospital.  Or a nursing home.  Or some other place you really don’t want to go to, which is why you want to stay at the corner of ER & RM for as long as you possibly can and grin big so other people will think you have a great personality and, quite possibly, wisdom.

Still.  The corner of ER & RM has its rewards, as I need to remind myself.  Finally, I am getting it.  I’m at a point in life that’s altered, less glamorous, more challenging.  Time to grin big, suck it up, get on with it.  The era of self-improvement isn’t over till you’re dead.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker)