Night Moves: How my mom tricked Alzheimer’s by visiting me in my dreams. [Tweet “Night Moves: My mom visits me in my dreams. How my mom tricked Alzheimer’s and visits the ones she loves”] My mother is probably a lot like your mother: older, loving, and not her younger self. I know when you look at your mother…
No, and Yes Live Together in The House You Build for Yourself. When I was younger I could say no without guilt, worry, or fear. In fact, at least once I not only said “no”, I also made a deal out of that ‘no.’ It was during my short stint on the track team where…
I tell you everything because I know you don’t judge me. You aren’t a judger. I just gotta know. What kind of person are you when you’re sick? A. Stiff upper lip. Continues with life with a discrete tissue up sleeve. B. Takes a day off work but returns medicated, slower but still game. C. Sleeps…
After losing my Thanksgiving Turkey my friend of thirty-five years called and said, “I have a story to tell you that will make you feel better.” I, of course, was ready to hear anything. I had just lost my turkey and my mother has Alzheimer’s. You do the math. So she said: “A year ago,…
I lost my turkey. I did. I lost my actual Thanksgiving turkey. This is not a metaphor for losing my shit. Or an allegory or an idiom (don’t feel bad if you have to google these, I did). Here’s what happened. I left the Madison Women’s Expo where I’d just given a talk on how…
No Sex Just Cuddling. I travel alone a lot. I like to travel alone. I can “vacation eat” without anyone raising an arched eyebrow and asking, “Don’t you teach Nutrition?” I can walk past museums without explaining why I don’t really like museums even though I know I should. I just don’t, okay? I can pee…
Instagrams: In Loving Memory Memory is a confounding thing. I’m reminded of that every day as I sit with either my mother or my children. My mother has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember my name and my two teen girls have a kind of adolescent memory loss where they seem to recall only the worst parenting…
My Brother, Jealousy and Getting Over Ourselves [Tweet “When my older brother Ray put his friend into a coma it changed my life but it took me forty-five years to figure out how.”] When I was twelve my family moved from one-hour outside of New York City to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and one-hour…
I wrote this book about you. No? Well, here’s how it goes with my new book I Like You Just Fine When You’re Not Around. I’m holding the book and a person next to me reads the title and laughs. Then as if I’ve caught them doing something embarrassing like thinking something not so nice…
Laughter and Alzheimer’s: Really? I write about Alzheimer’s because, it seems, I can’t not write about Alzheimer’s. This wretched disease shows up, one way or another in so many of my essays, even when I don’t plan on it. There are times that I’m clearly writing about Alzheimer’s and the ravages of its footprint on…
