My Son Told Me Not to Come for Christmas but Two Days Later My Phone Would Not Stop Ringing

being told, with polished courtesy, that I was not suitable for the table in the house I was subsidizing.

“I’m retiring,” I said. “From a job I’ve been doing for free.”

When I walked out of the bank the air was clean and cold and I breathed it in without difficulty for the first time in recent memory, which told me something about how much of my breathing continue reading …