Chewing Without Your Teeth

In Chewing Without Your Teeth, Peggy Rowe shows us that growing older may be inevitable, but losing your sense of humor is never a good option.

Peggy Rowe is getting older. There’s no point denying it. In Chewing Without Your Teeth: And Other Ways to Take the Bite Out of Aging, Peggy returns with more hilarious and heartfelt stories about life with her husband and their colorful neighbors at the retirement community they call home. Nearing ninety, Peggy has discovered that aging provides an endless supply of indignities—and hilarious material.

There are romantic date nights at the bingo parlor, revealing visits with the physical therapist, dentures left behind in restaurants, bathroom emergencies, and a riverboat cruise that proves adventure doesn’t have an expiration date. Through it all is John, Peggy’s husband of more than sixty-five years, whose hearing aids, misplaced glasses and teeth, and irrepressible sense of humor keep Peggy laughing—and occasionally worrying.

When serious health challenges threaten, Peggy discovers something else about growing old: laughter matters most when life isn’t particularly funny. Through hospital stays, John’s cancer, and the loss of her beloved sister, ordinary days with the man she loves, are anything but ordinary.

Warm, candid, irreverent, and laugh-out-loud funny, Chewing Without Your Teeth is Peggy Rowe at her best, proving that though the golden years may come with some tarnish, there’s still reason to laugh. After all, humor and a positive attitude can help take the bite out of aging—even when your teeth are sitting in a napkin somewhere.