This stretch of months, this time, this moment right now is the happiest I’ve ever been. It’s taken five years to get here. I’ve crossed, separately, and together with Sam, some dark canyons since 2013. We left D.C. five years ago with the intention of reinventing ourselves. Yes, for a final act. When you start […]
{Update from Debbie} It’s almost here! You’ve still got time to pre-order Sam’s book, At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life, before it’s published on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018. Pre-ordering pushes up his Amazon rankings and is hugely helpful in promoting his book. And if you’re reading this after that date, you […]
Thanks to my 86-year-old father’s planning, two dozen members and four generations of my immediate family flew from Maine to steamy Athens, Tennessee for the day to see the Aug. 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. It was the first since 1918 to cross the entire U.S. Given our ages, and the logistics required to get to the path […]
Today is day eight of Year Five of this gap year experiment. If there’s a theme, it’s one of gradual acceptance of aging along with an increasing appreciation of the power of words. If there are surprises, perhaps it’s that Sam and I are still happily married after so much time in each other’s company – […]
I was tucking my five-year-old granddaughter into bed the other night when, to prolong the moment, she plied me with a blizzard of existential questions: “Wait… granny, who are you married to?” “Who is mommy married to?” “Who will I marry?” And then a quick segue… “Are you old?” “When will you die?” “Will you […]
My favorite journalism professor, a retired war correspondent, was definite about this one thing. The secret to becoming a great reporter? Quantity. Write a lot. Then write some more. There is no other secret, he told us aspiring reporters at the University of Wisconsin-Madison back in the 1970s. Being a perfectionist, and also lazy, I […]
I dreaded it for months. But my 65th birthday came and went a week ago and life is still good. Grand, in fact. Despite recurrent depression, despite self esteem issues, despite everything about myself that I’d like to change, I am so looking forward to what lies ahead. Why do artificial milestones hang us up? […]
Jumping in with an update so you don’t think we’ve gotten lost. Here’s the back-of-the-envelope: Sam bought a 10-year-old Chevy pickup truck. It’s red. It looks shiny and new. I think it represents his final conversion to island man. He’s got some practical reason about how it will be easier to get fixed than his Mini Cooper. Pretty sure […]
I decided recently to get back up on stage to do public speaking. After my book came out, I delivered keynotes all over the world: Dubai, Sydney, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai, London, etc. It was empowering. It was terrifying. It was a lot of work. Unbelievably, that was a decade ago. The Corporate Blogging Book was published in […]
Sam and I are both in a play reading this week at Stonington’s Opera House. That may not sound like much, but it’s the first time we’ve appeared on stage together. Opening night happened to fall on Feb. 3rd, our anniversary. Love and Information is a quirky, challenging play by brilliant British playwright Caryl Churchill. Rather […]
