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By WILLEM LANGE

Our cab arrived at 4:40 a.m. on the dot and deposited us at the entrance to United Airlines about 5:30. Check-in was amazingly easy, and the trek to our gate likewise. We took off from Logan also on the dot — it seems to be true that the earlier in...

By WILL LANGE

Many of us are familiar with archy and mehitabel (more of us ought to be), a collection of essays, stories, and poetry written by archy, a cockroach with literary instincts and talents who’s been condemned to a life as a cockroach for the crime of...

By WILLEM LANGE

It’s likely the unavoidable fate of both teenagers and golden-agers that most news reporters and writers are aspiring 20-somethings eager to make splashes. Thus, if a young person with a newly minted driver’s license loses control of their vehicle on...

By WILLEM LANGE

The narration, a modern version of the second chapter of Luke, began the old familiar Christmas story. Mary and Joseph shuffled down the church aisle on cue, Mary cuddling a bundle clearly intended to be the baby Jesus, and Joseph strangely...

By WILLEM LANGE

My friend the late Walker Weed, of Etna, was the oldest member of the Geriatric Adventure Society, and easily the most experienced. When he offered an opinion or a pronouncement, I listened. He opined one day that if you ever have had an especially...

By WILLEM LANGE

A few months ago, my companion Bea (a very charming widow of whom you have heard me speak previously) was chatting with a divorced friend and happened to mention that she was keeping company with an elderly widower.“Does he live near you?” the friend...

By WILLEM LANGE

What would you have done? I was committed to a Friday-Sunday weekend down by the seashore in Nahant, just north of Boston, and I had a fund-raiser commitment Thursday at a senior living community in Peterborough, N.H., sort of halfway there from...

By WILLEM LANGE

A lot of us who live here have a love-hate relationship with leaf peepers. On the one hand, their annual migration to look at our autumn leaves brings in millions of dollars, and our tourist bureaus, whose job is to encourage that sort of behavior,...

By WILLEM LANGE

“They’re a pretty sorry lot.” — Barbara Bush Mrs. Bush was talking in 2000 about the Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination. But her appraisal would fit the 19 alleged miscreants who’ve been showing up this week for booking at the...

By WILLEM LANGE

I spent a couple of weeks in Costa Rica a few years ago. Lovely place. But by the time we were due to return home, I found I could hardly wait to get there.The weather had been lovely, and the bird-watching spectacular. Each day was much like the one...

By WILLEM LANGE

Most of us, I daresay, learned the story of Bluebeard as children (though, apparently, it’s too frightening and thus off-limits to some modern children). The wealthy, but grotesque nobleman, before leaving on a trip, gives his new wife the keys to all...

By WILLEM LANGE

The switch from nursing home to personal home went off without a hitch. The multiple family members here to help effect it then left one by one, till I’m down to: Kiki; Herschel, my four-wheel, silk-smooth walker; and Hagar, the hybrid SUV parked 2...

By WILLEM LANGE

January 2023 was a month of Sundays, ending abruptly on the 29th with a fourth and final Sunday fall on ice underfoot. My friend Bea and I left my house for church that morning, and that was the last time I saw the house till the day after yesterday,...

By WILLEM LANGE

The one crucial item for a stay in a nursing home is — and I’m sure this will surprise you — a back-scratcher. That may sound weird, but think about it. When you’re lying on your back for unaccustomed long periods of time, it itches. Seriously itches....

By WILLEM LANGE

I just bought a brand-new candy apple red four-wheel-drive sport model, big-wheeled walker. Its name is Herschel, and it will replace my old walker, which features two small wheels and two pierced tennis balls. In him I am currently terrorizing the...

By WILLEM LANGE

During the 1950s I had a friend who was kind of quirky. We were both aspiring mountaineers and did some really nice hikes and climbs together. But there was this about him: He took the label off all his possessions because he didn’t want to provide...

By WILLEM LANGE

With apologies to T.S. Eliot: Here I am, an old man in a cold month, waiting for spring, dictating to a young lady.It’s hard to grasp the difference in perspective between what I was doing happily — living alone at home in the company of a small dog —...

By WILLEM LANGE

This piece will be perforce much shorter than my usual exhalation. I’m writing it flat on my back in a hospital in Berlin, Vt. My lovely daughter Martha is typing this as I attempt to pull together the events of the last four weeks.In my never-ending...

By WILLEM LANGE

Foghorn? Right here! Give it a toot; make sure it’s working. Thank you. Bilge pump? Port side of centerboard trunk. Is it working? I don’t know. Two plastic buckets? Right here! Fill one of ’em to check if the bilge pump’s working. Good. Charts?And so...