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When I was sixty, seven of us decided to climb Blue Mountain in the Adirondacks. I’d done it before and wasn’t too enthusiastic—climbing mountains does not bring me joy— but here was a challenge. Could I still do it? What better to do on that particular day? Our group assembled… Read More

My husband Terry takes good care of me. I got my first chance to appreciate how precious that was a year into our marriage when I was on crutches after breaking a bone in my foot. I could I relax. I didn’t have to get back on my feet until… Read More

Six years ago, I moved from a house in suburban Montclair into an 18th floor apartment in urban Hoboken. As a reminder of the garden I was giving up, I brought with me a nondescript chive plant in a cheap orange pot which was reminiscent of clay but was only… Read More

AUX BERGES de THIL, Thil-sur-Arroux, Burgundy This is the co-owner, co-hostess, partner of the chef. It is a mom-and-pop restaurant (though they don’t have any children) which supports local farmers by serving their products. The chef trained in London and they both get along well in English. The food was… Read More

When I was dating online, when every first date was a blind date, nothing confused the feminist in me more than the moment when the bill came. Was the man responsible for the bill by default? If a man considered a woman equally responsible for the bill, did that suggest… Read More

My mother was a riot in the kitchen. She’d look at a recipe (usually in the New York Times Food section) and say, “I can’t make this tonight because I don’t have any parsley.” “Mom,” I remonstrated, “you don’t need parsley. You can use cilantro or just omit it.” But… Read More

The answer is simple:  the truth. Many people have a cynical relationship with online dating and discovering Little White Lies in your introduction is a bad start to a good relationship. Writers are told again and again, “show, don’t tell,” and that applies to public profiles as well as… Read More

In Beloved, Toni Morrison articulated my condition before I started to date again: …way past the Change of Life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage than when they were fifteen, and…it embarrassed them and made them sad; secretly they longed to die—to be quit of… Read More

Starting to date at sixty, after two divorces, might prove humiliating or catastrophic. If I failed, which I would certainly do, over and over, I wanted to do it privately, but not necessarily alone. Unless I changed myself, the odds were that I would end up struggling through another… Read More