A while into my retirement, I had a moment I wasn’t expecting. I was tidying the house — nothing dramatic — and my eye landed
There is a particular kind of recognition that arrives in adult life, usually somewhere between the late thirties and the late forties, that takes most
In most Japanese cities, the morning commute on local trains and subways includes substantial numbers of children traveling alone to school. They wear small backpacks
I will admit something that feels sillier than it was at the time. Around the time I turned 30, I got low about getting older.
There is a particular kind of summer afternoon, in a particular range of years between roughly 1965 and 1985, that is almost gone from life
The person who cuts contact with a sibling after a parent’s illness or death occupies a particular place in family stories. In the version told
Many adults now in their fifties, sixties, and seventies grew up in homes where the emotional weather changed from one evening to the next, and
My father rang me last Tuesday, for no reason at all, for the first time in roughly seven months. Nothing was wrong. Nobody had died,
The first sign you are reclaiming your life may not be peace. It may be someone else’s disappointment. That is the part we often don’t talk
There is a kind of distance that opens up between an adult and their family of origin that does not, in many cases, end in
The standard cultural script for retirement difficulty runs something like this: the person was busy their whole career, they retire, and they find it harder
Despair is a heavy word. Say it and most people picture the dramatic sort, the weeping, the dark night, the visible falling-apart. So it’s a