I am now eighty-eight years old; my husband is ninety-three. We have crossed the threshold into late old age. That threshold came late for us. Both of us were active and freely mobile until the fall of 2024. The change came suddenly when Bill slipped and fell in the bathroom. Fortunately, nothing was broken, but the strain of getting him up and into bed aggravated other issues that resulted in multiple trips to the Emergency Room at the hospital near us, the need for a walker and eventually two surgeries. He was barely moving for quite a while, but is now much, much better. He can take short walks with the help of a cane, can drive again, run errands and shop for groceries, which he likes to do.

My own life-changing event occurred this last fall. I had been having back pain for several years, which I assumed was muscle-related. Physical therapy and on-going therapeutic exercises didn’t really help, but I thought I would just have to keep working harder at them. I kept gardening and working on yard projects, pushing through the pain with no thought that I was actually damaging my back. Then one morning last September I was wakened by intense pain in my lower back. I could barely move. Bill helped me out of bed and into a chair. I phoned my doctor and was able to get in that morning. She prescribed pain medication, ordered an X-ray followed by an MRI, which revealed arthritis in my spine—stenosis as well as a small fracture in the lumbar region of my back. I am much better now. I am no longer in constant pain, and I have regained some mobility. I can drive again and can walk short distances using a roller walker. However, yard and house projects are no more, which is frustrating, but also a relief. I do tend to get stubbornly obsessive about things I want to accomplish.

So now the emergency part of Bill’s and my crossing the threshold into very late old age is over, at least for now. We are in the process of re-grouping, establishing new routines, learning what we need to know and do to negotiate as best we can this epoch in our lives. And for me, that means getting back to writing on this weblog.

I have pulled deeply into my personal life in recent years. I stayed in contact with family and close friends, but the only writing I wanted to do was in my private journal, something I do each morning as I drink a mug of tea and eat an English muffin before getting dressed and starting the rest of the day. I occasionally thought about writing something for my website or Facebook, but each time there was a deep No, a pulling back, a need for retreat, for silence. But that time seems to be over now. There is a desire to expand my personal world again, and I feel the need to write words that are not just for myself, words that other people will read, which is a very different discipline from writing in my private journal.

And so, I am setting myself the goal of writing here in this online journal once a month. Whether I shall be able to meet that goal I don’t know. Life is too iffy to say a stubborn, “I will do this,” the way I did while writing my books. But I shall aim for it, hope that I’m able to meet that goal.