-
A Working Retirement
September 3, 2010 by Rachel Kadish
Last year, at the age of 68, after more than 40 years in medicine, my father retired. His plan was to move full-time with my mother to a rural area of New York State where they’d kept a weekend home for years. That was the entirety of the plan: no commitments, no set travel plans, no continuing-ed classes. Given my father’s history, it was an utterly unrecognizable landscape.Tags: doctors, firefighters, retirement, work
-
Mothering In Public
August 25, 2010 by Joyce Hackett
“Spare some change? Something, anything! Trying to get something to eat.” My grocery store, and the sidewalk outside, are always packed after work. With so many customers jammed together, it must have seemed an ideal place to beg. But with four plastic grocery bags already cutting into my hands, I wanted the walk home behind me. When a space opened in the crowd, I stepped by the beggar, avoiding his eye. But the light at the corner had just turned red. “Come on,” he said to passersby, more urgently. “Something. Anything!” I wondered if he was anxious to gather enough money to get into one of the city homeless shelters that charges its occupants, before the place closed for curfew. Then his tone hit rage.Tags: good deeds
-
The End of the Phone Call
August 19, 2010 by Susan H. Greenberg
When I was 15, my parents got me my own phone line, attached to a mustard yellow Princess phone that matched the faux bamboo furniture in my bedroom. It was surely the high point of my adolescence. For my family, it represented the liberation of the household line from the siege of my protracted conversations, often conducted sitting on the kitchen counter while winding the cord compulsively around my feet. This was in the late 1970s, when curlicue cords were standard and “call waiting” beeps had not yet begun rudely interrupting conversations everywhere. For me, that phone was the key to privacy and independence, a symbol of all the connections I longed to make with my peers.Tags: telephones, texting, communication, friendship
-
The Secret Life of Cells
August 19, 2010 by Laura Wright
It’s no longer enough just to throw our stuff away; now we must worry about what someone else might do with it. So we buy shredders for our bank statements, pay to have old hard drives scrubbed free of personal information, and even take out identity-theft insurance to keep what was ours—yet what is still us—out of other people’s hands. I tear up junk mail, but 10 years ago, when my doctor threw away my tonsils, I didn’t think to have them cremated, pureed, or otherwise obliterated. -
Puppy Love
August 16, 2010 by Charles Siebert
A couple of years ago, during a visit to Austin, Texas, I took a personality test at a dog shelter. No, I am not a dog. The test was designed to ensure that I was making the most responsible, mature and, hopefully, lasting decision in selecting the shelter dog that I did. Looking back on that experience, however, what strikes me is just how irresponsibly and immaturely one can behave in the course of performing a deeply responsible act. -
My Patient, Myself
July 15, 2010 by Danielle Ofri
I had to be honest—I was uncomfortable with my new patient, a woman in her late thirties, in my office for a general medical check-up. Ms. M. was petite in stature, but wide in girth, a medical condition we’d term “morbid obesity.” Her face was entirely swallowed up in thick fleshy layers of neck and jowl. Her belly was so overgrown and pendulous that it hung like a third appendage between her legs. Her hips and legs were so wide that her gait was impeded.Tags: medicine, doctors, obesity, compassion
-
A Helping Hand
July 15, 2010 by Jay Dixit
Dave was the guy who rescued me from fourth-grade social oblivion, adopting me when I was shy and friendless and bringing me into his social circle. At the time, Dave was a popular kid in striped Benetton shirts, with a knack for getting picked in touch football. He helped me buy Levi's red tab jeans, showed me how to mousse my hair, and introduced me to his friends. Soon we were inseparable. But in high school, after his parents divorced, Dave started to change. He grew his hair long, stopped eating meat, and started talking like a stoned-out surfer even though he’d never tried drugs.Tags: goodwill, friendship, therapy, depression
-
A Digital Fatherhood
July 2, 2010 by Darcy Frey
Two days a week, usually on Monday and Friday evenings before she goes to bed, I open my laptop and, using the Internet, call the Brazilian city my daughter lives in 4,600 miles from my Boston apartment. If my timing is good, her mother is there to answer the call; I hear through my speakers the soft, gull-like sounds my child has made since birth, and in another few seconds she materializes on my screen, propped on her mother’s lap, her almond-brown eyes shining and alert. Sometimes she looks back at me and smiles. Sometimes, with her mother’s help, she stands up and jumps. She’s not quite walking, but she will be soon: In another three days she’ll be one.
Follow:
Share:
