How to Win The Productive Aging Award.

A few weeks ago I finally had to admit defeat and buy a pair of reading glasses. I did not plan to celebrate this milestone, thinking of it as the beginning of my physical demise. Then I recalled my grandmother's remarkable life.

My late grandmother of tea-making fame started to lose her hearing at the age of 28. She lived in the UK and had just given birth to my mother at the beginning of WWII. After The War, my grandfather travelled for 6 months of the year trading in precious watch parts and my grandmother was essentially a single parent for much of my mother's childhood. She dealt with her hearing problems by learning to lipread and donning hearing aids without a second thought...........

When There's Trouble Brewing... Do This.

As a Brit, a cup of tea, evokes many things: my childhood, my Dad and maternal grandmother, celebration, commiseration and friendship. But mostly it is connected with the emotions associated  with love, care and comfort.



As a child my father made and brought my mother a cup of tea to her bedside every morning. Tea was the mainstay of family food gatherings and I can picture my mother's teapots and delicious date and walnut or almond cake that always went with them in our light filled living room.

Growing up, I relished the tea my Grandmother made for me.  For a long time, I could not work out why it always tasted so special...

A New Universe

My paternal grandmother, Vivien, was a petite, blond, quintessential English lady and an astute businesswoman. She was the perfect grandmother as far as I, her first grandchild, was concerned. She had stocks of my favorite fondant mini cakes and always made meals for at least 30 people even when there were only 6 of us for dinner. Her chicken soup pot was bottomless and my father always enjoyed teasing her that there were at least 15 potatoes for each person. She took me to the ballet and out to restaurants for lunch. She was generous to a fault. She loved beautiful things and she saw the best in people. Her response to a difficult situation was always “As one door closes three open.” and I have carried that mantra with me however clichéd it sounds.

As I have been trying to make sense of the last five months of Jonny’s illness, brain surgery and recovery it has occurred to me how pieces of our family life seemed unwittingly to have fallen into place just in time for Jonny’s trigeminal neuralgia to roar into action.