She would pause on each landing, wheezing and coughing, as we climbed The El’s staircase at the K&A train stop in Philadelphia. But each August, from about the age of 7 until my early teens, my father’s mother, whom I called Nanny, insisted on taking me to John Wanamaker’s at 13th and Market streets in downtown Philly. We both wore dresses and our best shoes: she in low-heeled pumps, me in black patent-leather Mary Janes.

For part of the day, we shopped. Since I attended Catholic school, Nanny bought me clothes and shoes for after-school play. I was Nanny’s only grandchild.

Before we started for home, she took me to the Crystal Tea Room on the ninth floor where we had lunch, usually consisting of a creamy soup, and tuna or egg salad on white bread cut into quarters.

I don’t remember why we stopped our annual outing. It could have been her emphysema caught up with her, or maybe I didn’t want to go anymore…

We are lonely.

So much so that the Board of Supervisors in California’s San Mateo County earlier this month declared it the first county in the U.S. to suffer from loneliness at such an alarming rate and consider it a public health crisis.

We’ve been lonely for a while.

Data released last summer found that 37% of Americans don’t interact with anyone at least once a week.

Last May, even Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, called attention to Americans’ “loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country.” It affects us so deeply and can increase risks for premature deaths, similar to those that smoking daily does, not to mention other health disorders, such as heart disease, obesity, and substance issues.

What was interesting about the data was the generational results of loneliness: Gen Z (38%) and millennials (37%) feel more lonely compared to Gen X (31%) and boomers (19%). What’s more, having a BMW in your garage or a Gucci bag in your walk-in closet doesn’t seem to lessen loneliness: Americans at the upper rungs of success are more likely to be lonely than lower-income individuals. Which makes me think of Jay Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Notwithstanding his riches, he led a very lonely life…

The WhatsApp call was clearer than I’d anticipated. It was early morning our time, and my son Croy was talking to me from New Delhi, India. He was describing the flat he was staying in which belongs to the aunt and uncle of his wife Lulu. “It’s mostly marble so that during the hottest seasons, the rooms remain cool.”

We talked a bit more about the weather, in particular, the snow here at home, then about the brass shops he was hoping to visit possibly that day, and the impending departure from the States to India that the rest of my family and I would be taking in about 10 days to celebrate Croy and Lulu’s Indian wedding.

As we neared the end of the conversation, Croy mentioned that Lulu needed something. “Mom, Lulu forgot her heels. They’re in the coat closet off the living room. Will you get them?” Oh yes, I thought, those heels, the ones that shimmer…

Faced with the discouraging news that my loyal sitter had retired to Southern California, I had to find someone else fast.

My husband and I are picky. Or maybe our little one is picky. But I needed someone when we were gone who could provide the guidance, affection, and love (almost) that she expects from us.

I needed someone unfazed by her morning whining when she’s hungriest and her relentless requirement for bodily contact on the sofa, chair, or bed. I needed someone willing to offer special-need services consisting of mashing her cranberry vitamin in her food; slipping her raincoat on during wet days; and rubbing her bum rear leg, thwarted these days by arthritis. I needed someone like our last sitter. Did another such person exist? Hope springs eternal.

Let’s face it, 13 in dog years is pretty old, and while Gracie, our Havanese/Bichon gal, shows signs of slowing down, she’s not exiting the planet any time soon…

Reese Witherspoon, 47, Sofia Vergara, 51, Sophie Gregoire Trudeu, 48, and Christine Baumgartner 49, are all at or nearing the half-century mark. But they also share another life trait: This year, each of them announced their divorce.

Gray divorce. Diamond divorce. Silver splitters. Whatever the latest tag, in recent decades, a movement among many women nearing or in their 50s is to divorce the person with whom they’ve possibly shared a house, children, holidays, and well, just about everything for the last decades. So what gives?

In my debut novel, “Another Side of the Heart,” released this past September, Mary Devere, at 48 years old, tries to navigate her grief over the death of her only child, a daughter, in a car crash. While staying at her beach cottage on the fictitious Kilkare Island, New Jersey, Mary questions her life’s choices — one in particular, staying married to her neurosurgeon husband.

Throughout time, older couples tended to traditionally stay married whether or not they felt satisfied or fulfilled. But a few years ago, I noticed a changing trend when a couple of women friends over 50 divorced, and I first wrote about it in feature story for a magazine. At that time, studies showed that while the U.S. divorce rate among younger marrieds declined, it had started to creep up among adults aged 50 and older…