Lately I have sounded a lot like my father in his last years, when he was in his nineties. I breathe heavily when I move. Rising from a chair requires grunting with exertion. Then there’ll be a series of thuds as I grab the handles of a walker and bump my way...
One thing I’ve learned is that most of us are passionate about a couple of things and how much those interests emerge as defining parts of our identities. I don’t know exactly when I fell in love with being able to identify, for example, the wildflowers that...