I’m washing a white bowl in the kitchen sink. The bowl is round, twelve inches in diameter, five inches deep. Hands down it’s my favorite bowl in our kitchen, useful for mixing pasta with a sauce, the perfect size for a big salad. In the cupboard where it’s kept, three smaller bowls nest inside it.…More
Tag Archives: aging
Please State Your Sweet Nothings–from And Now This
Michigan Ear Institute, it’s no surprise, is a noisy place. I’m sitting in the waiting room when Mr. Robinson walks in. He steps up to the check-in window, signs in, and waits. The receptionist looks up. Her lips move. “What?” he says. Lips, again. “What?” he says, again. “HAS ANY OF YOUR INSURANCE INFORMATION CHANGED,…More
Wreckage–from The Enjoy Agenda
I was ten years old the first time I saw a real car accident and its aftermath. It was a humid summer evening. My father and I were closing our service station when the township siren sounded. A cop car screamed through town. Then the phone rang. My father took the call, listened a few…More
When We Went Hither–and what we swore
“Don’t even think about it,” Tizi said. We were walking down to the local market the other day, a two-mile round trip on foot. It was a bright morning in October, perfectly autumnal. I was telling her about a professor of mine who used to say au-TOOM-nal, a pronunciation I liked and tried on for…More
The Birds and the Beatles
I’m reading a New Yorker article about Paul McCartney at the breakfast table one morning. At the top of the page there’s a black and white photo of the Beatles, circa 1965. It’s the year, the caption tells us, of Help! and Rubber Soul. My wife and I are leaving for Italy in a week…More
Help?–the smile test and the agony next door
“I’d like you to take a drink of water,” the nurse says. “From a straw.” I’m in the ER at West Bloomfield Henry Ford Health System. She hands me a styrofoam cup with a lid on it, a straw poking out. I’m good at this. I take a little sip, nod and smile. “Not a…More
Where We Are–and why can’t I sleep
I forgot about New Jersey last night. On a typical night I am awake around 3:00 a.m. Tizi wakes me up, or I wake her up. We’re very quiet about it, being awake at 3:00 a.m., very considerate, very careful not to disturb each other, even though I have already disturbed her, or she has…More
Be There
The reminders come. You only have so long. This morning I’m online checking in for a flight. Asked for my date of birth I enter 10/29. Then comes the year. I have to select my birth year from a pull-down menu. When I pull it down, I scroll and scroll, watching the birth years fly…More
Don’t Worry About the Key–whistling, singing, disappearing
I’m not supposed to hear this. I’m not even supposed to be awake at this hour. It’s 3:00 a.m. Lying beside me, gently asleep, my wife is making a whistling sound. She inhales, then exhales, and there it is: a soft, clear whistle, with each exhaled breath. So it’s true. When I was a kid,…More