Mariel was home for Chanukah this year, which doesn’t happen often. When the kids were small I would spend weeks preparing gifts and decorations. As the kids got bigger the decorations and gifts became fewer, and there were nights when we would miss lighting candles altogether. Now since there are no kids left in the […]
It started with a cough. Not a very impressive cough at first, but as the days passed it grew. Steve kept telling me that he just had a cold, and when I insisted that it sounded like something worse, he got cranky. Now, I’ve lived with this man for 36 years, and I know when […]
Our house was full and I was happy. Every bed had a loved one in it: Lisa and Matt, Mariel and Dan, and Mike and Mary, our wonderful friends from Georgia. On Thanksgiving we had more food than we could ever possibly eat and more laughter than we possibly deserved. The girls had cooked and […]
Last night I woke up sniffling. Then I swallowed and felt my throat talk back to me. A cold — just what I needed right before Thanksgiving. There’s so much to do, so much to enjoy, so of course it’s the perfect time to cough and blow your nose continuously. I lay there trying to […]
If I had to make a list of things that I hate doing, interviewing for a job would be right up there. Isn’t it everyone’s dream to enter a room where they are at the mercy of someone who can make them feel instantly flustered and utterly stupid? I once read somewhere that an interviewer […]
Philistine: a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values It was a beautiful fall day, so we decided to go for a ride. I had read that a new exhibit had opened at the deCordova museum in Lincoln. Though Steve is not a great museum aficionado, he […]
This summer has been all about change, and I have to be honest: I don’t like it. It’s one thing if you’ve initiated change, but when it’s been thrust upon you it’s not usually something that you wished for. From something as small as having your supermarket rearranged so that you now spend all your […]
Our back yard has seen so much — troops of kids digging in our sandbox, hanging from monkey bars, sliding down the slide and swinging from swings. Games of hide and seek, tag, and duck, duck, goose. Softball and soccer rolling through the grass, excited shrieks echoing in the sky. We’ve hunted for snakes and […]
Next week my daughter Lisa will be marrying her longtime love, Matt. Steve and I are thrilled since we’ve been watching them gradually move toward this moment for three years. They are utterly in love, two parts of a whole, so there’s no problem there. The problem appeared when they asked us if they could […]
The last week of the school year. Time to find inspiration, energy, new ideas — time for a field trip. When we received a flyer from Roxbury Community College advertising its “College for a Day,” it was the perfect opportunity for us. I had never visited RCC, and I very much wanted to see the […]
