Entries by Susan Harper

By Susan Harper

I’m writing this on All Hallow’s Eve (popularly known as Halloween) and getting ready to turn myself into a pirate.

Nobody ever comes trick-or-treating at my house; it’s so far off the street, most people don’t even realize there’s a house back here. So I always go to what used to be my parents’ house, and is now (happily) my sister’s house. I’ll be standing in for her tonight, but the trick-or-treaters won’t know that, either – I’ll be disguised as a pirate/homeowner.
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By Susan Harper

I’ve been struggling with an eye infection lately, and a couple of weeks ago I picked up a prescription for an antibacterial ointment. The box containing the tube had the following instructions printed on it: “Instill one drop in each eye at bedtime.”

In retrospect I think we could have made a hit on YouTube with a video of me trying to get a “drop of ointment” into my eyes: head cranked back, eyes squinting at the tiny tube held above me, watching as – of course, inevitably – a ribbon of goo began to descend. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

I paid my quarterly taxes last week – having remembered the deadline (by a miracle) one day ahead -- and thought about how ironic it is that before I retired, back when I still had a decent memory, I only had to worry about taxes once a year, on April 15th, and there were glaring reminders all around me that it was Tax Day! But now, when I could reasonably be expected to have a few memory problems here and there, now and then, or even more often – now I have to pay “Estimated Taxes” every three months -- with no glaring reminders, no front-page news stories, no libraries full of tax forms, no conversations everywhere about taxes. It’s awful. It’s scary, too. I think the government should send me reminder notices. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Last week a friend of mine was hospitalized because of a blood clot. Since my mother was hospitalized for the same reason a few years ago, I knew that the treatment for blood clots is fairly routine in most cases: the patient receives heparin intravenously for a day or two, to thin the blood and dissolve the clot, and then goes home with a prescription for pills or an injectable solution which will continue the process for a few weeks or months. Simple, right?

Yes — but this routine procedure depends entirely on the hospital having a supply of heparin and the pharmacy having a supply of the prescribed blood-thinner for home use. That’s where things have broken down. As I write this, my friend is still in the hospital because there doesn’t seem to be a pharmacy in the area with a supply of the medication she must take once she leaves. And I hate to think what might have happened if the hospital hadn’t had heparin. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

The big newspapers are full of interesting juxtapositions these days. Of course, getting your hands on a regional or national newspaper is the first challenge

We are in a scary situation, as a country: facing a financial crisis and political gridlock at the same moment, we lack access to print media in which the issues are thoroughly and carefully discussed. Distribution is curtailed now, and some of the great newspapers and magazines have been virtually destroyed: eviscerated because of rising costs and falling subscription and advertising sales, or turned into tabloids (see the new incarnation of Newsweek) or organs for the expression of one person’s opinions on absolutely everything (see Rupert Murdoch’s reimagining of the once-great Wall Street Journal). [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Are you excited about the concert tonight, Aunt Sue?” That was my niece, Cary, talking to me after lunch last Sunday. My brother and I were visiting – we had come to see her in a production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” done by the same community theater group she performed with last summer, and I was still dazzled by her performance of the night before.

She is luminous onstage, and I’m not used to that yet – may never get used to it. I see now why performers are called “stars.” [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Little Henry Harper, my first grandchild, entered the world on the morning of May 25th, healthy, happy (smiling, even!), and one week late by anyone’s reckoning except his, evidently — and, I assume, God’s.

And I have been a total wreck ever since. I’ve left my keys, my wallet, and my glasses on store counters, misplaced my cell phone, and forgotten to take my allergy meds for three days running. When a thoughtful friend gave me a coordinated collection of baby gifts to send to little Henry, I left them in her car — and if I hadn’t run into her in the grocery store, they’d probably be there still; I kept forgetting to call her. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Yes, it’s true. Last week I was unleashed upon the country, with or without the right stuff in my suitcase. (Without, actually, as it turned out. I packed for spring/summer in the Southwest, but they had a sudden cold snap out there, and I arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona in my little tropical-colors cotton jacket to find that it was 36 degrees and snowing!)

I first flew from Atlanta to Los Angeles, with a stop in Dallas, and then drove down the California coast to San Juan Capistrano to spend Mother’s Day at the beach with my son, my daughter-in-law and her family. The next day, I drove east across California and Arizona with a friend of 40 years, to visit her children. We went through the Mojave Desert, and into some of the 194 mountain ranges of scenic Arizona, on the way to Flagstaff. And then we came back again – down to Prescott, across to Los Angeles — and went up to the high desert by train to visit friends near Antelope Valley. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

My whole concept of the wake-up call is rooted in my very limited childhood experience of hotels. Our family usually chose the more economical option of tourist cabins during our annual 26-hour trek from our home in New York to Georgia and back, and I still have elegiac memories of those miniature white houses — playhouses, they seemed to me — set amid groves of trees, usually, yet close enough to the road for us to hear the occasional truck whizzing by in the dark. The windows were open to the cool night air; no one had air-conditioning in those days.

Then motels were invented. They sprouted everywhere, seemingly overnight, and we kids, old enough now to read the roadside signs, discovered that the motels had swimming pools, and that was the end of the tourist cabins. We started bouncing up and down on the back seat (seat belts didn’t exist then either, not to mention children’s car-seats) as soon as the sun got low in the sky, chanting “Pool! Pool!” until we were threatened with no swimming no matter where we stopped. [Full Story »]