Age

During a recent Zoom call with several old writer friends, we started off by going around with our individual checkins. We hadn’t met as a group in many months, so enough time had passed for stuff to have happened, and as it turned out, it had.

Our news in each case concerned our health. Everyone had some sort of update on their health for better or worse.

Only after relatively in-depth descriptions of our visits with doctors and listing which medicines we were now taking, did we turn to our writing projects and other professional concerns.

It struck me how age-appropriate this was. Ten years ago, the same group rarely talked about our health concerns but about what we would do in our still somewhat distant retirements. 

Twenty years ago we might have discussed our relationship status, business prospects, the state of the publishing industry maybe, but not our health.

Thirty years ago it would have mainly our careers and our writings.

Forty and fifty years ago no one would’ve mentioned health at all. We were all on life’s upswing back then. But that was then.

Now, talk turns to our declines and also the friends who are no longer with us or unable to participate even by Zoom.

I have distinct memories from my childhood about my mother reaching the stage where she seemed to be talking about the health status of various friends and relatives all the time. I couldn’t really comprehend then why she did that.

Now I do.

HEADLINES:

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• Ukraine's Zelenskiy pushes allies to step up aid (Reuters)

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• How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals (New Yorker)

• Hundreds of graduate student workers at the University of California, Santa Cruz went on strike in response to the University of California system’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests, their union announced. [HuffPost]

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• How Gun Violence Spread Across One American City (NYT)

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• Trump Quietly Avoids Eye Contact With Rudy Giuliani Begging For Change Outside Courthouse (The Onion)