The Middle Ages

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Earnings escalator grinds to a halt

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

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.

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.

Susan Reimer: Firm gives real look at colleges

In the new Disney film College Road Trip, a hyper-suspicious, over-protective police-chief father portrayed by Martin Lawrence takes his long-suffering daughter on a costly road trip to visit the college of her choice, Georgetown, which is halfway across the country, instead of the college of his choice, Northwestern, which is just around the corner.

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.

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Don't let date nights become predictable

Being a family-life columnist has its perks.

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.

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Sisters bonding over kids' weddings

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Middle Ages

Susan Reimer: Entering world of 'managing' injury pain

They say growing old is not for sissies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.