The Middle Ages -- baltimoresun.com

August 17, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Writing dovetails with life's phases

I was a sportswriter when my bosses asked me if I wanted to be a family-life columnist.

August 10, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Scolded by all, but not sorry

Staying young, growing old and what happens in between

August 3, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Looking at living longer with less

Not long ago, I wrote that "near retirees," as we are now known, should consider working past the ages of 62 or 65 for all sorts of economic reasons, and we should salve our disappointment by doing some of the things now that we thought we would do in retirement - golfing in Florida or traveling in Europe.

July 20, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Coming soon, to a wedding near you

Connie and Nancy, my best friends since the seventh grade."

July 6, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: At least the will won't be an issue

Staying young, growing old and what happens in between

June 29, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Limits lower for today's grads

Staying young, growing old and what happens in between

June 22, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Ages loom large in election

Staying young, growing old and what happens in between

June 15, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Aging has perks in tight times

Sometime during my growing up, my mother lopped 10 years off her age and started making the occasional cradle-robbing jokes about my father.

May 18, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Parents almost can see finish line

My daughter graduates from college this weekend and, God willing, she will soon be on someone else's payroll.

May 4, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Days of cursive might be history

I can tell which of my three sisters has sent me a card by the handwriting on the front of the envelope.

April 20, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Debunking negative ideas about the next crop of workers

My generation of parents considers this job to be open-ended, and the gainful employment of our children is no longer the finish line.

April 13, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Putting a good face on aging

The Los Angeles Times reports that, after years of steady growth -- especially among the middle classes, the cosmetic surgery industry is suffering nips and tucks because of the shaky economy.

April 6, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Poet plucks at petals of her life

In the opening pages of her memoir, The Florist's Daughter, Patricia Hampl sits determinedly by a hospital bed, holding her mother's unconscious hand while writing the obituary of this difficult woman with her other hand.

March 30, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Earnings escalator grinds to a halt

Jessie, my college-aged daughter, once declared herself to be "unemployable."

March 23, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Lessening fatigue of cancer survivors

The terrifying discovery of the lump in their breasts. The surgery, the chemo, the radiation. All of that was behind them, maybe six months behind them, maybe five years behind them. But behind them.

March 16, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Fla. sun casts long shadow on future

Iraised my hand once too often at a charity auction and was the winning bidder on a week in Naples, Fla., at the gorgeous home of a generous donor, located inside a gated community and right on a golf course.

March 2, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Study fails to credit women

Research reported in The Archives of Internal Medicine and The New York Times suggests that men can survive to "extreme old age" -- which, for the sake of argument, is considered 90 -- if they don't smoke, manage their weight, control their blood pressure, get regular exercise and avoid diabetes.

February 24, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Don't let date nights become predictable

Being a family-life columnist has its perks.

February 17, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: It's neat to see kids' own habitats

Parents Weekend is that long-standing college ritual in which parents, who dropped their freshmen off just weeks earlier, get to return to campus and see the kids in their new habitat and assure themselves that they are just fine.

February 10, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Sisters bonding over kids' weddings

Four sisters born within five years. Eleven children born to them within 10 years.

February 3, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: When a wife had to be well-dressed arm candy

I've always felt that I was born in the wrong era.

January 27, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Couple likes Baltimore enough to move here

Debra Thomas and her husband, Terry Shepard, found Baltimore in the answers they gave to one of those preferences quizzes you might get from an online dating service.

January 20, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Students traveling, but so are parents

My friend Betsy called me from in front of her stove, where she has been cooking for her four children for too many years to count.

January 13, 2008

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: We got the one tear, and that is enough

For the first time in the history of crying, it actually helped a woman in the workplace.

December 30, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Average age of gardeners on the Web is increasing

This is gardening's hot-stove season, when, just as in baseball, planning and daydreaming replace the action in the field.

December 23, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: The phases of her life can be spelled out in cars

"But mom, that van defines you," my daughter, Jessie, said during the family's latest round of musical cars.

December 16, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Women's sacrifices, taken to the extreme

Christopher Buckley's dark satire Boomsday imagines a Social Security crisis that pits the generations against each other, and a public relations campaign to persuade older Americans to do the "right" thing and check out early. There are even financial incentives and free Botox if you schedule your suicide.

December 9, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Tenacious as ivy, socialite-gardener remade her life

In 1924, at the age of 51 and with her marriage crumbling and money nearly gone, Norah Lindsay, a beautiful English socialite of the second tier, began a career as a garden designer, working for the aristocrats who were her friends.

December 2, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Your vision of retirement could be all wrong

Boomers, I think, anticipate their retirement in ways our parents did not.

November 25, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Entering world of 'managing' injury pain

They say growing old is not for sissies.

November 18, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: When kids visit, frame questions with care

The holidays are upon us and, if we are lucky, our grown-up kids will make it home from college or careers and spend some time with us, the parents who still think if them as children.

November 11, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Arguing against the rush to retire

Like you, I have been working and raising children for a quarter century and, of late, I have been daydreaming about what it would be like to retire from both jobs and have some fun.

November 4, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Parents can only light the way for grown children on odyssey

After social scientist William Galston presented his report on what our twentysomething children are up to these days, he was swamped with e-mails, phone calls and dinner-party button-holing by panicked parents.

October 28, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: New 'odyssey' stage disconcerts parents

A social scientist defined it. A respected journalist named it. And parents are buzzing about it.

October 21, 2007

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Humbling to see what history has forgotten

I recently returned from a trip to Italy, where I attended the wedding of the daughter of a dear friend and where I pondered, among other things, the meaning of old.