On Saturday morning, Margaret stands at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee that has gone cold while she was looking at her phone.
I was one of the latchkey kids the studies were counting. What got measured as independence in childhood shows up in adulthood as something else: people who could not, in any reliable way, ask for help.
I sat in the rental car for ten minutes at the end of my father's road last weekend, engine off, hands on the wheel, unable to make myself drive.
It is a Sunday evening in London, and my father is sitting in his usual chair, in his usual living room, with the news on at a volume slightly too loud.
I want to tell you about a specific Sunday in 2018, in my parents' kitchen in London.
I had a friend in New York, years ago, who was certain about everything.
Seventy used to be the finish line.
