My daughter-in-law laughed as she gave me a $2 scratch-off for my 73rd birthday. Ten months later, my own son shoved a senior living brochure in front of me and said, “We already picked your room.” They thought I was too old to fight back. They had no idea what I had been hiding.

I closed my eyes and wished for more afternoons like this one.

Imperfect, noisy, full of people who were trying.

No one gave me a scratch-off ticket that year.

I didn’t mind.

PART 23

Several months after that birthday, I received a letter from a woman who had attended one of our financial workshops.

Her name was Alma, and she was seventy-eight.

She wrote that she had always assumed it was too late to learn new things.