Archive | Age Matters

Blessings in A Minor

December 10, 2015 in Age Matters, City Matters

I was sitting on a stoop waiting on a friend, as the Stones used to sing, when I sneezed very emphatically, as is my wont. A little boy emerging from the elementary school across the street cried out in a high, triumphant voice, “Gesundheit!” Not to be outdone, all the other kids joined in, and for a second the honking cars of the early evening were drowned out by a symphony of children’s voices blessing me. The cockles of my cold heart are officially warmed.

Grateful to be Grateful: Thanksgiving 2015

November 30, 2015 in Age Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Spirit Matters, Travel Matters

For as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving weekend has been difficult—often the most trying time of the year. In general, I have never been much for official holidays. Valentine’s Day is drek; the “parent holidays” are the emotional equivalent of an emergency root canal; New Year’s Day is amateur hour layered upon the fake birthday of Jesus. I even find Groundhog’s Day to be unhappily charged, though this stems from a personal coincidence.

But Thanksgiving has always loomed as the worst.

It’s not just that it is a blithe celebration of the worst strain of colonialism. It’s not just that a yearly gratitude practice rings as false as a Hallmark sympathy card. (Gratitude is a daily—hourly!—value in my cosmology.) It’s that no other day is so much about biological/nuclear family, and I became a conscientious objector to these institutions for very real, very painful reasons. Continue Reading →