When I lived in Nashville those eight years, while I pursued my doctorate at Vanderbilt, when you were told by a doctor or dentist that you needed some procedure, medicine or treatment, you knew you had some medical necessity requiring action. And so it was that when upon completing my coursework our family moved back to the west coast—specifically to Los Angeles--we were in a state of deep trust that the same would hold true here. Sadly, that has not been the case. For instance, when I went to a new dentist for the first time, he put a 20x magnifying lens to one of my front teeth to show me some wear and tear on the bottom edge that I had never noticed before and that he felt compelled to fix. Reflected back by the enlarging lens, the tooth’s edge looked like the Grand Canyon and I immediately agreed. On went some cosmetic dentistry miracle that required a bit of filing away of what until that moment I had thought of as perfectly normal tooth. It cost some bucks and looked dazzling and if that was the end of the story, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it.

The youthful-sounding reporter from a national woman’s magazine called to interview me about life balance issues, chagrined that the cut-off for ages to be addressed in the article is 35. “Please don’t pass this on,” she whispered to me, after reviewing this website. “I’ve got elementary school children in the house so everybody thinks I’m in my thirties, but I’m actually in my late forties.”
Susan, who freelances home with dogs barking in the background not to mention playground sounds and Nintendo bleeps, went on: “And you know what? I’m not the oldest mom at the school gatherings. We’ve got plenty of fifty year olds. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like for them to still be parenting in their sixties?”

Seated with a group of friends in a restaurant, I suddenly heard a girlish squeal. Somebody one of us hadn’t seen for quite some time had entered the restaurant with her husband to celebrate her birthday. In high spirits, we sang a round of “Happy Birthday to You”—but how old was she? The best I could muster was somewhere between 45-70.