I’m waiting with a full cart in a checkout line at the grocery store. Someone lines up behind me with a cart barely containing half a dozen items.

I’ve never been good at dealing with things that lack urgency.

My children are the dog-eared pages in the story of my life. Nothing creates my memories with more reverence, joy or generosity than my children.

Here’s the crux of it, the poetry. Here is the secret revealed: we are no more victims of old age than we were victims of childhood, adolescence or middle age.

It begins. Everyone starts marching in a straight line around the room to the beat of an old Chubby Checker recording, but our line soon becomes a doodle, then morphs into an interpretative dance.

Old age swaddled him like a heavy garment. I watched as without moving he reacted to the sounds and sights of things goings on around him.