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“I decide that from now on we should listen to him. His lip may be deflated and his left side paralyzed, but he knows. And he has made terrible mistakes. But he knows. He knows. We are lucky that way.” Lucky That Way , a nuanced, richly engaging memoir, chronicles the joys and tribulations of a daughter who rediscovers her father as he nears the end of his life. Ernie Gerhardt, an artist and teacher, is largely estranged from his five children, but when he suffers a debilitating stroke, his daughter Pamela must fly to Las Vegas to tend to him. When she arrives to find Ernie newly and shockingly fragile, she is hit by an unexpected wave of tenderness. As she watches over him in intensive care, she recalls turning points in her family history—the early death of her mother and her father’s turn to heavy drinking--and reflects on the idiosyncrasies that make an imperfect and unique family, on what it means to become old, on what happens when parents are no longer the caregivers but the cared-for, and on how a family copes with their responsibility to the elderly. Written in a crisp, engaging style, the story is less about the drudgery of finding the right mix of medicines, at-home caregivers, and rehabilitation centers and more about the emotional ramifications of caring for the sick under the weight of sometimes flawed attachments. People make mistakes, grow old, get sick, and pass on from this world. Lucky That Way examines the irritations and comforts of contemporary family bonds. Gerhardt sifts through the complicated, multi-layered relationships for both wry comedy and high drama and records a string of triumphs and mishaps as Ernie and his five adult children struggle to manage his life and find meaning before their time runs out. The emerging theme of imperfect humans struggling with life's great mysteries will strike a chord of recognition with the tens of thousands of Baby-Boomers and Gen-Xers who are currently facing similar circumstances with their elderly loved ones. Pamela Gerhardt’s heartfelt story about a family coming to terms with their aging father’s illness and imminent death takes readers on an emotional roller coaster that highlights love, loss, humor, and sadness.

\"A witty, tender memoir of a son's journey home to care for his irascible mother--a tale of secrets, silences, and enduring love. When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself--an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook--in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure--the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict: Betty, who speaks her mind but cannot quite reveal her heart, has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay. As these two unforgettable characters try to bring their different worlds together, Hodgman reveals the challenges of Betty's life and his own struggle for self-respect, moving readers from their small town-crumbling but still colorful-to the star-studded corridors of Vanity Fair. Evocative of The End of Your Life Book Club and The Tender Bar, Hodgman's debut is both an indelible portrait of a family and an exquisitely told tale of a prodigal son's return\"-- Provided by publisher.

Historian John E. Miller addresses the issue of accurate historical representation in his book [Laura Ingalls Wilder]'s Little Town. He argues that Wilder's novels are \"only as accurate and as detailed as her sixty-three-year-old memory would allow. That many of her memories were vivid and authentic we can be sure, but as she herself admitted in letters to her daughter, her recollections were often vague, receding, and sometimes nonexistent\" (5). Even when our memories are strong, ideologies or character traits tend to color our interpretation of the past. In this way, we may select episodes that reconfirm those prejudices and restructure events to support an unconscious bias (Novick, Kammen). For instance, the aging Wilder still loves and honors her father and so shows him in the best possible light, avoiding any material that might cast doubt on his heroism. Even the unnecessary crossing of a swollen, fast-moving river is depicted as noble and courageous, despite the fact that they all could have drowned at that point. This reading of Pa Ingalls concurs with [Ann Romines]'s extensive use of family correspondence to analyze Wilder's plot development, intent and eventual outcome. Wilder had also wholeheartedly embraced Pa Ingalls's quest for freedom, freedom to go wherever one pleased, to do as one liked without interference from the government. In Little House, ironically, the government comes under fire because it has interfered with Pa Ingalls's search for freedom by not yet relocating and limiting the Osages' freedom. Consequently the Kansas Territory is not yet open for settlement. Pa is \"settling\" Indian land, but the government is depicted as the villain. Elsewhere Wilder writes: This vision of untrammeled individualism was not merely a product of Laura Wilder's nineteenth-century notions about progress, but also represents a significant ideological contribution by her daughter, [Rose Wilder Lane]. Prompted by necessity to make some money during the Great Depression, Rose pushed her mother into publishing the oft-told tales heard in Rose's childhood about the frontier life. In the process of recording and reworking her mother's words she became a silent, unacknowledged editor, although Romines sees this relationship as a cross-generational collaboration, which shaped both the format and contents of the now famous series (Holtz). Viewing the pioneer past through Rose Lane-colored glasses only exaggerates the themes of self-reliance and the absence of any governmental intervention. Rose Wilder Lane was an ardent foe of the New Deal (Holtz, Miller, Romines). With every increase in federal assistance to the unemployed Americans of her day, she reworked the past to reflect a better time when people did not rely on the government. Thus, the telling of these tales suffers from a two-fold distortion. The first stems from the selective memory and application of episodes to sustain a structure to make sense of hardship and suffering. The second occurs as this \"fiction of autobiography\" is put into the service of a distinct political ideology arising in a particular time and place in American history. Together, these re-shapings render Laura Wilder's tales as much more than a simple remembrance of life as it actually unfolded in the wilderness. They created a world that probably bears very little resemblance to the historical reality of the day and fails to reflect the complexity of experience that filled ordinary people's lives. Nonetheless, as an \"objective\" record to an audience hungry to hear about the good old days, the stories took root and flourished to assume a life -- and political mission -- all their own. For example, William Holtz's biography of Rose Wilder Lane notes, \"the July Fourth episode in Little Town on the Prairie was expanded to include a speech that echoed Lane's commitment to freedom and to the kind of personal responsibility that goes along with it\" (Miller 91; Holtz 382-383). Miller notes, however, that Wilder was essentially in agreement with her daughter's politics and such intrusions only emphasize the ideology rather than alter it.

Byron Seibold recently celebrated his 70th birthday, which is not a remarkable milestone in today's era of extended longevity. Mr. Seibold has the typical maladies of aging--some vision and hearing issues, a bad hip, some memory lapses but no signs of Alzheimer's. His primary care physician, Dr. Chris Prater, attributes Mr. Seibold's good health as a septuagenarian to \"good genes,\" which begins the remarkable part of the story. This article tells the story of Byron Seibold, the sixth child of Mike and Rebie Seibold, who was born in 1936 with the genetic condition of Down syndrome. His parents received the standard guidance of the day, being told he would never walk or talk and that they should not expect him to live past age eight. With the doctor's prognosis given at the time of his birth now disproved seventy times over, Byron's friends, family, and physician realize that reaching this age, without any of the attendant characteristics of dementia that affect an extremely high percentage of individuals with Downs syndrome, is, quite possibly, a significant landmark. Dr. Rick Rader, Director of Orange Grove Center's Morton J. Kent Habilitation Center at Orange Grove, and his executive assistant, Susan Jenkins, have researched the topic of longevity among those with Down syndrome and have determined that Mr. Seibold is quite likely one of, if not the, oldest living individual in the United States with Downs syndrome with no indication of dementia.