PHOTO BY JAMIE MIDGLEY

In TIME's special section called Generations, I've spent the last five years focusing on topics that concern people of Boomer age and above—the marital stresses of caregiving, housing and travel strategies for retirees, and the best bicycles for boomers. I've written about college kids who stick you with their geriatric cats and turtles and adult children in their thirties and forties who won't take their stuff out of your closets—no matter how much you beg them.

On the personal side, I'm a boomer myself. I've been a wife, a mother, and a widow. For more time than I care to recall, I was a middle-aged dater. Last year, I got married for the second time and my daughter for her first. For our new family's first Christmas, my husband and I successfully met the challenge of housing and feeding (in our New York apartment) six grown or nearly-grown children: my two daughters, two-stepsons, one step-daughter and one brand new son-in-law. Our household also includes two very high-maintenance cats adopted for my kids when they still lived at home. Don't even ask about my closets.

Between my reporting and my life, I've learned a lot of coping strategies and over the years have become a go-to person for my friends when they want a piece of information or a piece of my mind. If I don't know the answer to your questions, I'll find someone who does. And I'll have something to say about it.

—Francine

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