And it included a GPS — When my father died three years ago, shortly before his ninety-ninth birthday, I received an unusual gift I would not otherwise possess. I had never seriously thought about death. After my father’s funeral, the thought played in my mind on repeat. Once a seemingly infinite commodity, time began to take…

Pretty little pieces of gummed paper — Everyone who knew him was aware my father was a stamp collector. Binders upon binders of meticulously curated stamps lined the bookcases in every home he lived in, and he loved to show them to any remotely interested person. If he met someone new, he always asked if they might…

Staying, healthy, happy, and living longer — Today is my wedding anniversary. It’s a pretty big number, and that amazes me. That we have survived together this long is an accomplishment, particularly after the forced togetherness of the pandemic. All those nights of having dinner together — hundreds of dinners in a row because we had nothing…

You choose the ending — Life in my parents’ generation — in the 50s and 60s — was a pretty straight shot. It consisted of school, work, marriage, kids, retirement and old age. Today our trajectory is anything but straightforward. Take millennials; they live longer with their parents (I still have one at home), have…

Confronting our stories — Writing stories about any part of your life is similar to extreme sports as far as I am concerned. Most of us have tangled and complicated lives and I am full of admiration for authors of memoirs and personal stories who try to confront what the hell happened in theirs. …

The truths about aging to embrace — It feels like yesterday I was twenty years old. And all of a sudden, the cashier at the grocery store assumes — correctly — that I am eligible for their senior discount for home delivery. I walk to the grocery store — forty minutes each way to get my exercise…

It’s that time of year — For many years, “home for the holidays” meant returning to the small town where I was born and raised. I returned there to celebrate Christmas with my parents. I drove, flew, took a train, and once, still in my teens, I even hitchhiked. …

It’s time for the adults to do something — Why has a much-loved Grade 3 teacher named Fatemeh Anvari — teaching in a small bucolic Quebec town north of Canada’s capital — lost her job? Because she wore a hijab, the head-covering Muslim women wear. Under Bill 21, in the province of Quebec, no public servant working with the…

Some things never change — I am not going to indulge in the smoked meat vs pastrami debate. Schwartz’s on Saint-Laurent Blvd, in Montreal, has arguably the best smoked meat sandwich in the world and leaves any pastrami sandwich available in the dust. This is not only my opinion, millions who have eaten this sandwich…