When I was in child-raising mode, my mother phoned periodically. I never phoned her. God has given us sure principles to live by, and one of them is “with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38). Now it’s my turn to hear crickets, and to feel that each contact of mine is an interruption. 

Last Easter dinner I made them all watch a comedy skit called “Mother” by Nichols and May. An excerpt:

“Hello, Arthur? This is your mother. … Remember me?”

I don’t envy others their big houses or frequent vacations (or not much!). Here’s what I do envy: Those grandparents who get to visit their grandkids more than twice a year. Living less than a day’s drive—say, three hours—away from grown children seems ideal. It’s close enough to join them for school plays and tournament games and sleepovers, but not near enough to be an imposition (or a convenience?). I’ll have to say, though, if my offspring wanted to move down the road I wouldn’t object. Instead, they both live on opposite sides of the country.

I went to my 50-year high-school reunion, the one we all thought would be forever from now. Well, forever just showed up. Walked through the door cocky as you please and said, “Remember me? The future?”

Fiftieth high-school reunions—and I suppose to a lesser extent 40^th, and even 30^threunions—are retrospective. They have glimpsed the limits of human achievement and are in varying degrees of coming to terms with it. (My cousin once said to me about her young adult children’s prospects, “I keep lowering my expectations.”)

When Patrick Mead took his father, Bill Mead, to live in a dementia care facility the week after Thanksgiving, he taped a note to his dad’s door. Mead wanted the staff members to know about the new resident in Room 14, even if his father couldn’t tell them himself.

“My name is Bill Mead,” the letter began. “I was born in abject poverty. I became a warrior (U.S. Navy, Korea War era). I then laid aside my weapons and became a minister and missionary. I traveled the world, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. …

A New York moment:

I popped into a Compassion and Choices “community listening session” about the bill in New York to legalize physician-assisted suicide (or as the group terms it, “medical aid in dying”). That bill would allow physicians to prescribe fatal drugs that terminal patients would self-administer. Disability groups chiefly oppose the practice on the grounds that it would put economic and emotional pressure on the vulnerable or “less valuable" to end their lives. 

A new law will allow Japan’s Emperor Akihito, who would otherwise have had to serve for life, to abdicate; he plans to step down in 2019 at the age of 85. This extreme approach to tenure contrasts with America’s federal judges: Firing one would take a (literal) act of Congress, but they’re free to leave whenever they choose.