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Aging & Transitions
Growing older is a quiet transition – from work into retirement, from the familiar into the new, from one stage of life into the next. On Fireside you'll find stories about aging and life's great transitions, by real authors. Read the latest stories about aging and transitions for free.
What I Learned Looking Into Mouths
by Bob
Retired dentist Bob looks back on 35 years of practice through eight dry, numbered observations and confesses, for the first time, that he found something in thousands of strangers' jaws he can only describe as a form of sacredness — arriving at a quiet, tender realization about his wife.
What love is like at 58
by lena_brenner
Lena compares love at 28, 34 and 58. Less fear through more loss. Finite love as the only true kind.
The Street
by Magdalena
The café on Magdalena's corner has changed three times. Her neighbour remembers a bakery that is now a phone repair shop. Magdalena wonders what she'll miss in sixty years.
Mr Nowicki
by Magdalena
An 81-year-old regular comes into Magdalena's pharmacy every morning at 8:15. He buys vitamin C. He comes because his wife used to come with him. Magdalena makes sure to be there at that time.
The First Night
by Helga
Last shift March 14th. At three in the afternoon Helga doesn't know what to do — three in the morning she knew, three in the afternoon is a different country. Tea. Bird. Light. At eleven not tired. Up until two reading. So this is what evenings are. This is what everyone else has been doing.
Nights That Don't End
by Helga
Iceland's winter night begins at three in the afternoon. Helga did 35 years of night shifts in it. Familiarity with the dark, not comfort. In her first winter of retirement she stays up all night twice — just to remember.
Perhaps
by Eszter
The shop has been perhaps closing for 11 years — 2013, 2020, now. Now is different, quieter. The Hungarian literature section is still excellent, the corner chairs still there. Eszter doesn't know what she'd do otherwise. Never allowed herself to think seriously about it — wisdom or cowardice, she's not sure which.
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