A gay boy and his deaf uncle connect through the unspoken experience of being outsiders in a family It was a warm evening and we were eating outside on my grandparents’ rarely used patio. We gathered at Nanny and Papa’s, my maternal grandparents’ home for Thanksgiving, the High Holidays, and…

and Finding Hope — Back in January, approaching my 65th birthday and all the markers of my Golden Years: numerous doctor visits, the advent of Medicare and signing up to collect my Social Security, I decided to buy myself a gift –- a hearing aid. Now, the irony of all this wasn’t lost on…

And getting up off the couch. — I have gotten quite good at filling my time in semi-retirement. I teach writing part-time, and now, entering my slow season, without commitments, deadlines, or a compelling reason to bounce out of bed in the morning, I’m sluggish, inert. My couch is my home ground, the place I come back…

I was fundamentally an outsider — When I was a boy, I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours paging through a large, white hard-covered book entitled Nations of the World. …

Making peace with the passage of time — or not! — On the lower edge of the passenger side-view mirror of my old Nissan, the words, “Objects are closer than they appear” are written in neat white print. I hadn’t noticed the for some time until the words struck me with strange force. …

Trying to Fit in in Provincetown — It was Carnival week in Provincetown, the height of the summer tourist season, an unlikely time for me to show up on the tip of Cape Cod. Still, I had the time — a 6-week summer sabbatical — and no one to spend it with. So I signed up for…

Accepting the Hairline I Cannot Change — I’d been in Provincetown for two days, and it was clearly time for a makeover. It was late July, the height of the summer tourist season. Nothing had changed from my previous visits, except that many of the men seemed younger, a reminder that I had grown older. …

A Boomer’s Long-Distance Love Affair with His Hometown — I grew up on the outskirts of a once great American city, its population approaching one million people, 7th largest in the nation when I was born in 1957, and today, under 400,000, outside the top 50. In the suburb of Beachwood, I formed an instinctive love for the downtrodden…