I had my first cold at sixty-five. Well, I still have it. I’m still coughing like Courtney Love after a night of cigarettes and heroin or one of those women who die of consumption in old movies. It’s the kind of cough that makes you check the tissue to be sure it isn’t spotted with blood. So far it has lasted a week, the cough, the congestion, the headache, the exhaustion. I find the whole thing annoying and unacceptable.
Read MoreThis understanding was deepened when I attended a party where the host had supplied wonderful food, a number of games, a whole organized playlist, but when I arrived, I was left to find a place for my coat, the host being in deep conversation and I never found the sense of belonging that eases many social situations.
Read MoreIn the early eighties I was bottoming out on drugs and alcohol. My drinking had been the shameful habit I had carried from the age of fifteen, a straight A student with many achievements, I was a teenage alcoholic and knew I was exactly like my father. He was who I called to ask for help. I told him if he allowed my mother to come forward with her incredible denial, you are perfect, you are wonderful, stop drinking, I would kill myself. He met me at the airport, and we drove home in the silence of understanding. We are the same. Later, instead of becoming violent I allowed someone to hurt me until it became clear I would have to get help or die. Again, my father stepped forward, this time with a broken heart as my eldest sister Catherine, had been killed by a drunk driver several months before. This time it worked. On December 22, 1984, I stopped drinking and stayed sober. This year it will be thirty-eight years of continuous sobriety.
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