Peggy's usual lunch date (and usual lunch drink) with her middle-aged children turns from routine conversation to life-changing revelation. Peggy, alternately sweet and acerbic, skillfully maneuvers to keep control of her waning power. Her two children must come to grips with the fact that parents, at any age, have lives that may be very independent of their children's. Johnson creates indelible characters' outrageously funny and painfully human. His recent Before My Eyes and The End of the Tour here at Victory Gardens, as well as A Fall to Earth and A Blameless Life at Steppenwolf, walk the line exquisitely between humor and compassion.