This piece was published in the San Gabriel Tribune on May 1, 2005.

I belong to a generation of women who broke new ground. We entered law school and medical school in large numbers. We ran for office and won. We got jobs in male-dominated professions. We achieved goals our mothers dared not dream. We were proud and we were strong.
 
We demanded to be judged by our intellect, not our looks. We took our daughters to work and taught our sons to cook. In just one generation, many of us head corporations, serve at the highest levels of government and are well represented in the legal and medical professions. We have achieved what we set out to do.
 
Most often when I talk to women my age (50-somethings), we don’t talk about our achievements but about how old we look. I listen to long and loud laments about what the aging process has done to our bodies. We talk about wrinkle creams, exercises for “problem” areas and our terror at being seen in a bathing suit. It seems that as we aged, we took the focus off our brains and placed it back on our bodies – the ones we took for granted in our youth that now seem to be the centerpiece of our self-esteem.
 
Are we just “girls” at heart – focused first and foremost on our looks as we watch them fade and change in unflattering (we think) ways?
 
A woman whose son said she “looked like Grandma” was horrified. Why would she not look like her mother as she got older? And even if she did, what’s wrong with that? Had her son told his dad he “looked like Grandpa,” I suspect her husband wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
 
Growing older gracefully in a youth-obsessed culture could be as big a challenge for my generation of women as competing in a male-dominated world was forty years ago. In this case, we have met the enemy, and it is us. We are the ones who obsess over every pound, stare at the wrinkles, consider a facelift (or maybe just an eye tuck) and try to find clothes that will conceal the inevitable forces of gravity.
 
It is hard for me to believe that women who had the guts to enter a profession in which they were the only female cannot face an aging body with dignity and style.
 
My generation showed our daughters that they can do anything they want with their life – except grow old. That, we are teaching them, they must face with dread and shame. What a sad footnote to a brave generation of women.
 
We claimed the right to use our brains and to be judged by our abilities, and we succeeded. We grew in wisdom and experience as our bodies grew softer and shorter – a natural function of aging. Men are not the ones withholding from us the right to age gracefully and gratefully. The resistance comes from within, not without. 
 
A woman I know recently received a gorgeous bouquet of red roses from her husband for her birthday. Several of us gathered to admire the beautiful bouquet. One woman asked the birthday girl how old she was. She lowered her head and whispered, “fifty-five.” Our group response: “Hey, you don’t look that old.” We quickly reassured her that she didn’t look a day over forty-five.
 
Never mind that she had a devoted husband, a great job, a beautiful home and three successful and happy kids. Oh, no, we all implied by our tone and our comments – you are old and that fact outweighs all the great things you have accomplished in your fifty-five years.
 
We have to get over this.
 
Let’s claim this right to grow old without apologies and regret. Let’s share the wisdom the wrinkles reveal. Let’s look as good as we can, not as young as we can. Let’s cross this self-imposed barrier with our own moxie and style.

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This piece was published in the Los Angeles Daily News on February 6, 2000.

​I work in a family-friendly office. My fellow employees and I will stop what we are doing to admire a newborn baby, a three-year-old niece or a child home from college. We can show off our progeny with immunity. 
 
Lucky for us, our boss knows that spending a few minutes gushing over a child is time well spent. We don’t have to hide our pride in our families because it doesn’t diminish our dedication to our work. 
 
One day last week, a coworker walked through the office, introducing her long-lost daughter to her fellow staffers. Most of us knew the story. Our coworker had become pregnant when she was in her late teens, brought the baby to term and surrendered her daughter to an adoptive couple who raised her with love and care.
 
The long-lost daughter was born after Roe v Wade became the law of the land. My coworker had a choice in the matter and chose to give the crisis pregnancy an opportunity to live.
 
When she introduced her daughter to me, I felt pride and the mother-daughter connection, with a difference. I was well acquainted with her other daughter, born five years later within the bonds of marriage. The love was there for both girls; the connection was different.
 
I felt free enough to ask the mother and long-lost daughter to stand together as I observed the family resemblance. They willingly agreed and locked arms, hamming it up. There was a physical resemblance. There was a tiny link between the two but not much. After all, they were strangers.
 
As I watched the two women strike a pose, I tried to understand the pain my coworker must have felt as she made the decision to bear the difficult months of pregnancy, the physical agony of childbirth and the lifelong pain of separation from her child. 
 
The two were smiling broadly as they posed for me while I looked for a family resemblance. I saw it loud and clear. The mother gave life and the daughter lived it. The mother was too young and unprepared to raise her baby, but she didn’t shy away. She did the right thing.
 
I’ve always known about adoption and heard numerous stories about biological parent reunions with their biological children. Until that moment I had never really stood face to face with the miracle of adoption.
 
Adoption takes a loss and makes it a gain. Adoption solves problems for people at opposite ends of a terrible spectrum, who may never meet, but meet each other’s needs.
 
A very young woman gambled and lost in her search for love. A sad and frustrated couple gambled and lost in the search for fertility. The birth mother did not let her child lose the opportunity to have a family.
 
That is what biological mothers and adoptive parents know when they make the precious exchange. Both have traded disillusionment for hope, despair for joy and a solution to a mutual problem. 
 
As the long-lost daughter left the office and things returned to normal, I was left with warm and wonderful thoughts about adoption. How rare in life it is when a wrong can become a right. In the case of adoption, it can truly happen.
 
The birth mother can place her baby in the loving hands of a family and continue on her journey to adulthood. The adoptive parents can fill the hole in their hearts with a tiny bundle in need of love.
 
I cannot know the thoughts of my coworker as she went back to work after her long-lost daughter left. Surely here feelings of pride are tempered by regret, her feelings of love diminished by distance and surrender.
 
At the heart of it, she must know she did the right thing for her daughter’s family. She gave the most precious thing a mother can give her child, a family of her own.

 
 







This piece was published in the Pasadena Star-News on May 17, 2006. 

​When I tell people I “lost my job,” I get a sympathetic look and an expression of 
concern. The word “lost” is a euphemism that is designed to soften really bad news, like death. It is appropriate for death, but not for a job. It doesn’t ring true for a job. A job is just a job – until you lose it.
 
I know how to get to the office, I know where my desk is and how to turn on my computer. I know where the bathrooms are and I know how to sign in – and out. Losing something implies that we can’t find it. I was told, in quite surreptitious ways, to get lost.
 
After almost ten years at the same job, I got the boot. Getting the “boot” seems more appropriate than “lost.” I’ve heard about people who got the boot, right before they were to retire, and lost their pension. I know about down sizing and massive lay-offs. I used to think those people should have seen the writing on the wall, that they should have done something before they lost their jobs. Then I found out that sometimes the writing on the wall is written in invisible ink, and you just can’t see it – until you are shown to the door.
 
My ouster (also better than lost) was preceded by a process that I naively believed was “change management.” I stood with my little break-out group, in front of a flip chart, armed with several felt tip markers, during our change management training. Buzz words like: “opportunities” and “challenges” were flying around the room. We thought outside-the-box as hard as we could, but no one answered the question in all our minds: will we still have a job when all of this is over?  
 
Another part of the change management training was designed to teach us to relax and to focus on the positive things in life. The trainer asked each of us to share a happy moment that had happened in the last 24 hours. A pregnant woman said she felt her baby kick, a man described a tender moment with his mom. Everyone laughed when I said I was grateful that I finally found a plumber who fixed the leak in my toilet. I should have known then that the final laugh would be on me. 
 
After we were trained-for-change we got the new “org” chart – a flow chart with tiny boxes cascading down the page, all linked together to describe the chain of command (no, I am not in the military). Some people panicked when they saw that their jobs were no longer on the chart. Others gasped when they saw who would be their new supervisor. My job was still on the chart, but another department was added. Not to worry, I told myself - I’m still a contender.  
 
Then I was told I had to apply for my “new” job and that the boss was recruiting “outside” (code: younger) candidates to compete against me. My boss asked me for the web address of a professional organization I belong to, so she could post my job on their site. Perhaps the handwriting on the wall wasn’t invisible after all, I just didn’t want to see it. 
 
After the change training, the org chart, the boss’s request for help in advertising my job to competitors, and some other things that are not fit to print, I got the message. It was time to get out of Dodge. As with many of life’s unexpected surprises, this one turned out to be a change for the better. 
 
Rather than becoming a casualty of change management, I have chosen to be liberated by it, and I count my blessings every day. First, there are the twice monthly checks from the Employment Development Department. Second, I have the opportunity to re-invent myself and start something new. Third, I know I did my best at my former job and left it in better shape than I found it. Fourth, I can sit at my computer and look for a new job. Last, but not least, I don’t have to wear pantyhose. 
 
I was handed a great big lemon and, after I figured it out, made lemonade. I now manage my own changes, and know that I have a lot to look forward to. Since I lost my job, I have gained much more than I lost, and for that I am grateful.

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​This piece was published in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles on November18, 2005

First, he told me that Jewish husbands are the best husbands because they “only cheat 
a little.” He grinned up at me and I smiled back. At five feet eight inches tall, I am used to being taller than many men, but when I put my arm around my diminutive father-in-law, the top of his bald head barely reached my shoulder. Still, he stood as tall as any man I ever knew.
 
When my father-in-law, Jack Stein, congratulated me on converting to Judaism, he said, “don’t be ashamed.” That time he wasn’t kidding - he really meant it. His admonition made me sad, but also taught me more than any book or museum could teach about persecution, cruelty and hatred. I knew intellectually what I was in for, but Jack’s words hit me in my new Jewish gut – don’t be ashamed.
 
When I met my husband-to-be more than twenty-five years ago, I had no idea that I would gain not only a wonderful mate but an entire culture and religion that was more than five thousand years old. What I learned in my conversion class was thimble sized compared to what I soaked up by spending time with Jack and his friends. When I came into the family, Jack was part of a group of survivors who had been together since they arrived in Dallas after the war and raised their families together. What I learned from them is that being Jewish leaves one open to irrational hatred that no one can understand, much less explain. What Jews do, I learned, is survive. 
 
One night I sat on the couch with Mrs. “red” Goldberg and Mrs. “black” Goldberg (so designated by the hair color of their respective husbands) and listened as they described the Nazi horrors inflicted on them and their families. They described their hardship without self-pity or bitterness but with a will to survive that didn’t have to be expressed specifically because it was infused in their words. They talked with gratitude about the life they had been able to build in this country.
 
Mrs. “black” Goldberg told me the Nazis liked to watch her husband, Herschel, run up a hill while carrying two soldiers, one under each arm. It amused them, and probably saved his life. Herschel was still a bulldog of a man who, well past retirement age, worked part time at a deli and was the source of day-old bagels for the group.
 
When Jack told me not to be ashamed of being Jewish he spoke volumes about what it is like to belong to this tribe. An unbreakable thread runs through it that has never been severed, in spite of the most evil attempts. By telling me not to be ashamed, Jack was telling me to be proud of my decision to become a Jew. 
 
Jack taught by example to survive terror and pain and go on to live a good, long life surrounded by family and friends. Jack didn’t just survive, he chose to love life again. He teased the ladies and cheered for the Cowboys and hummed in the shower. I saw a gleam of triumph in his eyes, filled with tears, as he watched his granddaughter ordained as a rabbi.
 
We lost Jack five years ago this month, just before Thanksgiving. Last week, as we rose for the Kaddish, I gave thanks to God that Jack was part of my life and that he taught me to be a proud Jew. I could not have found a better teacher.

This piece was published in the Pasadena Star-News on December 7, 2003.

The baby boy squished banana chunks between his tiny fingers before he shoved them 
 in his mouth. He pointed to the banana peel and said, “ba-ba.”  His foster mother 
 handed him a few more chunks.  He looked at me, smiling at his great accomplishment.  
 Four little white teeth had emerged from his gums. 

As I looked into his innocent eyes I marveled at how far “Raymond” had come in the 
eight months since my sister became his foster mother, after his birth mother left him at a bus stop with a stranger and never came back.  My sister’s was his sixth foster home. He cried constantly because he was battling a heroin addiction and alsosuffered from an anal fissure, ruptured ear drum and thrush.

His medical problems were treated and his tiny heart – one bereft of love – was filled. He learned how to laugh and play and gained the confidence to flirt with strangers like me.

My sister is a foster parent who specializes in babies from birth to one year. In the five years she has been fostering babies she has sent most of them to loving adoptive homes. The child welfare system mandates that babies go to their blood relatives – if they can find them. If no blood relatives are found, a baby becomes eligible for adoption by a certified adoptive family.

Prior to Raymond, my sister fostered another baby boy, “Travis,” for a year before he was available for adoption. She worked with his new parents to make the transition as comfortable as possible. The adoptive parents came to my sister’s house for dinner.  A few days later they babysat while my sister and her husband went out for the evening.

Travis met his new parents for the first time on his own turf. He had a chance to get to know them while he sat in his own high chair.  They fell in love with him immediately. Once he was comfortable, his new parents took Travis home to a fully furnished nursery, with tons of toys, a permanent Mom and Dad and a childhood full of love and attention from people with whom he did not share one drop of blood.

Raymond isn’t so lucky. His grandmother wants to raise him. She made this decision in spite of the promise made by Child Protective Services that Raymond’s adoptive parents would welcome his grandmother as part of their life – complete with pictures and visits. Couples that long for a child are willing to do what it takes to adopt a baby. 

Raymond’s transition was not smooth. When his grandmother arrived, they went to a fast food restaurant. Amid the chaos of children and burgers and fries, Raymond was put in the arms of his blood relative. She stayed the weekend and then left. Life as Raymond knew it was over and this well-meaning stranger was now his guardian. 

None of the myriad of professionals involved in Raymond’s case paid much attention to my sister’s concern about his placement with his grandma. Raymond’s psychiatric evaluation said that his transition should include preparation and association with the new family to transition his bonding, in light of his early trauma. If the transition was abrupt, he might just give up on bonding entirely. Child Protective Services had a “placement” and needed to move on – bonding be damned.

Just like Raymond, my sister was denied a smooth transition.  Her voice, the one that knew Raymond best and cared about him the most, wasn’t heard.

As Richard Gelles, Dean of the Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work said, “We drive people out of the foster care system by giving them nothing other than a check and thank you very much, but by the way, if you complain, we’re taking the kid out”.

After she spent months nurturing a damaged child so he could once again trust adults, my sister was forced to betray his trust – in the interest of reunification. I looked at the pictures she took of him the day before he left, sitting in a grocery cart with a sad look. Everyone at the store knew he was a foster child and made a point to say hello and to give him a balloon or a hug.

A few years from now, will Raymond sit on the porch with his grandma and watch the other kids learn how to ride a bike with their Dads running along side, holding on till they get their balance? By the time he is learning to drive a car, will his grandmother be up to the harrowing experience of sitting next to him as he careens down the road, as all new drivers do? Will her blood tie to him replace all the things he will lose because he’ll never have a Mom and a Dad?

Because the child welfare system insists on family reunification, loving adoptive families won’t be able to provide the kind of home babies like Raymond so desperately need. Foster parents who want to care for a child until he can move to a permanent home, instead hand him over to a blood relative whose intentions may be good but whose actions hurt the child they claim as their own.

Until the child welfare system recognizes that the bond of love is more important that the bond of blood, loving foster parents will watch their tiny charges go off to homes that cannot give them what every child deserves – a Mom and a Dad of their own. 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This piece was published in the Pasadena Star-News on February 2, 2002.

Each sixth-grader had to give a one-minute speech at the graduation ceremony. Although it terrified them, they had to do it to get out of elementary school. I watched with pride as my son delivered, with a shaky voice, the one-minute speech he had rehearsed for hours.
 
The teacher told the graduates to talk about their plans for the future, their goals and dreams. She wanted it summed up in one minute. I thought back to the day I had enrolled my son as a first-grader, six years ago. Recently remarried, I uprooted my two young children and moved them from Denver to Los Angeles. He took it hard.
 
He had left his very best buddy back in Denver and, being a loyal friend from a young age, did not want to make any new friends, much less a new best buddy. He took his time choosing a new friend. Every day I listened as he came home from school and told me what his day had been like and despaired when I heard no mention of a best buddy. Finally, in October he told me about his new friend.
 
From then on I heard about Danny every day. They were fast friends and I gave a prayer of thanksgiving.
 
We planned a Halloween party. Danny was first on the list. A few days before the party, his mother called and asked more than the usual mother hen questions. I wondered why but answered them so that my son’s new buddy could attend. 
 
The friendship was sealed. It was always to be, but never played out. “Danny died,” my tearful son said when he arrived home that awful day in November. Who could believe it? Danny died on the playground after school.
 
He was playing too hard, running too fast and simply ran out of time. Danny had a heart condition, controlled, so his parents thought, with a pacemaker. That explained all the extra questions before the Halloween party. 
 
I wrestled with the idea of taking a young child to a funeral. The decision was made for me when the family closed the attendance to immediate family only. We were left with loose ends but moved on. Six years later, my son was graduating from elementary school.
 
I suggested he mention Danny in his speech and he agreed. In his first sentence he asked the assembled proud parents and teachers to remember his friend. Before talking about his future, he took a moment to think about his past and his best buddy. We didn’t know that Danny’s aunt was in the audience. She asked for a copy of the speech to give to Danny’s father. 
 
Several weeks later we received a letter from Danny’s dad, thanking my son for bringing his son’s memory to that graduation day. He told us where Danny’s grave site was. We went there together on an early summer day, late in the afternoon as clouds began to gather and the sky was low and gray.
 
We found the headstone and sat together looking at the sky and talked about Danny. “He wasn’t a nervous kid,” my son said. “He always seemed kind of calm and not worried about anything.”
 
I remembered Danny in his little tiger costume, with whiskers carefully drawn on his tiny face, running in my living room with several other six-year-olds, never to be seven. On a humid summer evening I looked at my beautiful, healthy twelve-year-old boy, ready to start his life as I sat by the grave of a six-year-old child. Sadness flooded the same part of my heart that was filled with gratitude for my good fortune.
 
As life bestows its blessings and tragedies, we brace ourselves for the worst and hope for the best. We must always remember to remember. I am grateful for the comfort Danny’s father took when his son’s memory was evoked at a milestone Danny would not mark. He was moved by the compassion of his small son’s friend, who remembered him all those years later.
 
The letter and the trip to visit Danny gave closure to my son and me. It taught us that compassion is important, especially for those who left too soon for reasons we cannot understand. Danny’s untimely death taught so much. Just as a friend will do, he taught us well.  
 
 

 
This piece was published in the Pasadena Star-News on May 7, 2010.

There aren’t many barbershops left anymore. You have to look hard for that red, white and blue barber pole outside a shop that has a couple of chairs inside with old guys sitting in them, stubbornly refusing to enter a co-ed hair salon. The strict segregation of barbershops for men and beauty shops for women is over. A man can walk into a beauty salon with his head held high and get his hair cut by a female. I have 
seen a male or two getting a dye job in my salon. 
 
I saw lots of barbershops in my hometown of Findlay, Ohio. I was twelve-years-old the year our town celebrated its sesquicentennial (150 years). Findlay was a great place to grow up and had lots of open space where I was free to roam around on my bicycle with my dog running alongside. The town was short on culture, though, and it wasn’t until the sesquicentennial that I got my first experience with a live musical performance, other than the high school choir.  A barbershop quartet sang at the local band shell. Four guys sang in perfect harmony about the girl they love. I was hooked.
 
This quintessential American music was considered a bit old fashioned even back then. The singers dressed alike in striped shirts and used a lot of hand gestures that were choreographed to accentuate the lyrics. At the end of the songs, they held the last chord in four-part harmony while the crowd held their breath. Finally the chord ended and the audience started to breathe again. 
 
The corny old tunes, like Sweet Adeline,always had a girl at the center of it that the singers were desperately in love with and wanted to walk back home. (In 1945 in Tulsa Oklahoma, a group of women formed their own organization called Sweet Adelines.) Down by the Old Mill Stream was a particular favorite since it was written on the banks of the Blanchard River that ran through Findlay. Written by Tell Taylor, it has been a barbershop standard since 1910. 
 
There is a purity to barbershop quartet singing because they perform with no musical instruments to accompany them. The harmonious, a cappella style, with voices only is very simple concept considering that music today can be created by a computer. A fine barbershop quartet lives and breathes this music and spends many long hours practicing.
 
I was delighted when I met a woman who was married to a member of a barbeshop quartet (Barbershop Boy meets Sweet Adeline girl) and discovered that the world of barbershop is alive and well in Southern California and throughout the world. I found out that the Barbershop Harmony Society, a mostly volunteer organization, is grooming new talent and that young men are forming barbershop quartets and entering competitions. Soon after I found out where barbershop quartets were performing, I began to attend concerts.
 
The Masters of Harmony, a men’s chorus in excess of one hundred members in all shapes, sizes and ages, boasts a varied repertoire, ranging from the classics to jazz, patriotic to sacred, with some musical theater pieces adapted for the barbershop chorus style. The numbers are choreographed, with some of the younger guys jumping down from the risers while dancing and singing, moving props around on stage without missing a note. While they maintain their historical roots, many barbershop quartets and choruses use arrangements from pieces ranging from the Beatles to Brahms.   
 
In our electronic age, the innocence and exuberance of a group of men singing about the women they adore in rhyming lyrics is refreshing. Today’s popular music is also about love but has more sexualized lyrics in some songs and downright dirty lyrics in others. Barbershop music describes a time that is lost, but the music is as vital and entertaining as any contemporary musical style. 
 
If you have heard this great American musical art form and want to relive it or perhaps want to introduce it to your children or grandchildren, check online to see if there is a group near you. In Southern California visit https://www.mastersofharmony.org for more information. For the ladies, visit the Sweet Adelines at https://sweetadelines.com.
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 

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This piece was published in the Pasadena Star-News on August 23, 2012.

The scab that is the abortion debate has been picked off again in a most vile way. The debate about forcing a woman to have a baby that was conceived due to rape always elicits emotionally charged reactions. People who say abortion should not be allowed in those cases because the child has a right to life do not consider the consequences to the rape victim, the woman they want to force to become a mother. She also has rights.
 
The goal of rape is to degrade and humiliate the victim. The perpetrator uses intimidation, threats and physical violence to prevent the woman from resisting. In this society we consider rape to be a heinous crime and, when tried and convicted, send the perpetrators to prison. However, they bear no responsibility for the child that resulted. It is the woman who is alone and pregnant.
 
Men don’t rape women so they can create new life. They do it to physically and psychologically hurt them. If a pregnancy results, the entire burden falls on the woman and she alone has to go through a pregnancy she didn’t want and has to deliver a child she never planned to have. It is easy for those who deny her an abortion to say the child has a right to life. It makes them feel good about themselves, and then they walk away. 
 
Suppose the woman is married. Are those who want to deny her an abortion expecting the husband to support his wife through a pregnancy neither of them planned or wanted. Can they imagine supporting their own wives through an ordeal like this? If the couple has children, what do they tell them? A bad man hurt mommy and now you are going to have a brother or a sister. Really? 
 
If the rape victim doesn’t have health insurance, how would those who deny her an abortion suppose she would pay for it? She can go to a county hospital, but I wonder how many of those people would go to a county hospital for treatment.
 
Even if she has insurance, there are co-pays and deductibles. If complications arise and costs skyrocket, the out-of-pocket expenses would be substantial. Would any of those people who feel she must go through the pregnancy step up and help pay the costs?
 
The bottom line in this scenario is that the woman is victimized once and is then further victimized by a society that requires her to gestate a fetus whose rights trump hers. She will endure a pregnancy she didn’t want and go through labor to deliver a baby who is the living reminder of the violence and degradation that was forced on her. The physical, emotional and psychological costs to her are tremendously high and she should have the option to end the pregnancy.
 
The man who did this to her is long gone. The people who deny her abortion have gone on with their lives, claiming their righteousness in the preservation of life, not knowing or caring that the pregnancy they insist she go through could destroy hers.  
 

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 This piece was published in the Pasadena Star-News on June 7, 2009.
He struggled with the shovel and my husband offered to help. He declined, intent on his task, wanting to do it himself. He was giving up so much and this was just one more piece of the life he was about to leave behind.
 
Finally, the mound of dirt was dug out and my husband dived under the tree and retrieved the desert tortoise our neighbors called “Speedy” for twenty-seven years. A few days earlier, our neighbor told us he was moving. He and his wife were both retired and ready to move, but stayed put until Wilbur’s mother passed away.
 
Wilbur drove daily to the nursing home to give his mother dinner. Towards the end he had to spoon the food into her mouth. Finally, she stopped eating. For Wilbur, it was another routine that came to an end.
 
We had moved to our home twelve years earlier, leaving our small, empty nest for a much bigger one in a neighborhood with high block walls enclosing the yard. After gardening for many years on a yard the size of a postage stamp, I now had lots of space for my tomatoes, herbs, flowers and perennials.
 
I spent many happy hours on the top terrace of our yard where I could observe Wilbur, a fellow gardener, meandering around his yard. My two dogs stood on their hind legs, stretching as high as they could, trying to peer over the big block wall. They yapped their heads off, trying to get his attention because he always appeared with doggie treats in hand.
 
When I first spotted Speedy in Wilbur’s yard, I missed the tortoises I put up for adoption many years ago. When our children were small we inherited a tortoise and took good care of her for years, registering her with the Fish and Game Department,  supplementing her calcium and keeping her burrow dry on wet winter nights.
 
After I took in a male, nature took its course and the pair started to reproduce. Not wanting to raise hatchlings, I placed my fertile pair in the capable hands of a tortoise lover who wanted to take on that responsibility. I missed the slow but sure example of the desert tortoises. I forgot the lesson they teach us, day-by-day, of the need to slow down.
 
Wilbur told me he wanted to live closer to his wife’s family so they could help him take care of her. She had been chronically ill and housebound for many years. I could tell he didn’t want to leave his home, but he needed help. I told him I was sorry to see him go and offered to adopt Speedy. A spry old guy, Wilbur jumped for joy.
 
On that overcast day, while my husband and I watched Wilbur struggle with the shovel to unearth the shelter he built so many years ago, I knew that Speedy was soon to be displaced. Unlike Wilbur, Speedy was unaware of her displacement and didn’t know she would resume her leisurely life in a new back yard. 
 
Two years after Wilbur moved, his wife died. He followed her a couple of years later. A family with two young children moved in next door and occasionally I retrieve a ball that flies over the block wall that separates our yards.
 
Speedy is still going strong. I built a burrow for her under the orange tree. She appears in the spring and forages around the yard all summer. In addition to reminding me to slow down, I also think of Wilbur when I see her and remember his devotion to his mother and wife. 
 
My husband and I plan to stay in our house indefinitely, but we are smart enough to know that life can through curve balls and I may end up passing Speedy back over the wall to the care of the family next door. If we, and Speedy, are displaced I’ll try to take it with the grace and style Wilbur did so many years ago.