OSHER 623 - Literature of Aging and the Family

Our selective sight often sees family patterns we celebrate -- the comforting, connective traits and habits of nature. So matter-of-fact are these connections that they are often unacknowledged or unexpressed. At other times we shield ourselves from the fact of our aging parents because of the recognition of what we may become. Yet, there may be more here than the self-absorbed fear of aging bodies. As we watch the changes of aging family members, we recognize our inability to freeze time, to make them stay where they were in our earliest memories. As depicted in literature, relationships between generations remain knotty, often difficult, sometimes ambivalent, and always mysterious.