Archive - Active Listening

Cleaning out my mother’s house after she died revealed the usual postmortem waste. Old checkbooks and old budget books, framed and unframed college and…

Feb 14 •

December 2023

Yesterday I opened up some of my mother’s mail and found a bill for $45,903. It’s from a hospital (where else), and isn’t itemized—there’s just a…

Dec 22, 2023 •

July 2023

After January’s crisis my mother’s health got better for a few days, maybe a week or two, before returning to its slow decline. She did not feel well…

Jul 7, 2023 •

February 2023

Waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in

I never planned to write a newsletter about elder care or spend so much time writing chronicles of how things are going with my mom. But this is what it…

Feb 1, 2023 •

September 2022

My mother’s health took a turn for the worse back in April. I keep meaning to write about it, but it’s not easy to tell the truth about what happened…

Sep 16, 2022 •

January 2022

This is what I do on Friday nights

The thing I like most about Philadelphia is the way people greet each other on the street. There’s never any question—you make eye contact and say hi…

Jan 29, 2022 •

Last year I wrote about the challenges of writing when you’ve experienced a dislocation—of needing to have a sense of who you are and where you’re…

Jan 7, 2022 •

October 2021

I promise I'm not ghosting you

It’s just that I moved! To Philadelphia! And it’s been amazing! Also I’ve been buried in a heap of unpacked boxes, shelves not yet anchored to the…

Oct 22, 2021 •

September 2021

Keeping in touch

I feel like I should say more about the thirty-year-old boyfriend. He had a lot more going for him than a roach-free apartment. He’d just wrecked his…

Sep 12, 2021 •

August 2021

To Philadelphia

The week I graduated high school I moved into the apartment of my thirty-year-old boyfriend in Broward County and pretty much never went back home. I’ve…

Aug 27, 2021 •

Masks are back :(

I wrote a thing about how it felt like the virus was over, how we all got to spend a minute feeling like this whole sad era of isolation and death was…

Aug 15, 2021 •

July 2021

When I started this newsletter I did not expect to write about my mom at all. She’s been doing the same thing for so many years that it felt like she’d…

Jul 29, 2021 •

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts