GOLDEN YEARS

WHEN YOUR MOTHER enters her ninth decade, you make a point of being a little extra vigilant for any signs of decline—memory loss, bouts of repetition, a general acceleration of age-related deterioration.

THANKFULLY, MY MOTHER has been blessed with good health, and although she now needs to take someone’s arm while walking slowly up and down the hill to the family cottage, her mental faculties seem to have remained largely intact. But when she got inked after turning 80 last September, I started to wonder.

To celebrate Mum’s landmark birthday, we were planning a large