We need to find ways to carry on in our changed world

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We need to find ways to carry on in our changed world

A friend, just back from a week in Arizona and still on Mountain Standard Time, was saying that he felt tired. But it was more than tired. He shook his head. He couldn’t explain.

He followed up with a description of Phoenix with its flat streets and the mountains surrounding it and his trip to the Grand Canyon and the joy of being with family after so long a time. He was animated talking about these things. But it’s his first observation that stayed with me. He was tired, yes, but he was more.

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Resilience defines these graduates

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Resilience defines these graduates

My friend Anne says do not compare. I will say that I am sad about something and that I shouldn’t be because what do I have to be sad about? Other people have bigger reasons to feel sad, and really I need to buck up, and count my blessings. Things could be worse.

And she will tell me this: Sad is sad. It is not a contest. Don’t measure it. Just acknowledge it.

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Christmas in April, and the timing was perfect

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Christmas in April, and the timing was perfect

I can see the Christmas tree from where I sit. It’s in the front hall, and because my office looks out on the hall the tree has been my companion since early December.

It’s artificial, of course.

Right now it is decorated for Easter, festooned with Peeps and chocolate eggs and small, fuzzy bunnies and forsythia plucked from a neighbor’s yard.

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Before COVID, there was a freedom that is no more

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Before COVID, there was a freedom that is no more

Nearly two years. That’s how long it’s been since the big bad wolf came huffing and puffing, causing us to batten down our hatches, forcing us to stay inside. Nearly two years ago life as we knew it suddenly stopped. Before was a different world. There were smiles you could see. Handshakes between strangers. Kisses among friends. Galas. Parties. Celebrations. Crowds without end.

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At times like this, a cheerful daughter is the best medicine

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At times like this, a cheerful daughter is the best medicine

When my daughter Julie was 5, I caught a flu, took to my bed, closed the bedroom door, and told everyone to leave me alone.

Her older brother and sister, as well as her dad, were fine with this, but Julie kept slipping me notes: “I hope you feel bedder.” “Want me to make you a baloney sandwich?” “How about if I read you a story?” Each note was accompanied by a drawing of me looking sick and her looking sad.

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Cherishing porcelain angels, and the real ones in our lives

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Cherishing porcelain angels, and the real ones in our lives

I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. I came to Florida to rescue him. That was the first time. It was March and his wife had just died. And there were COVID-19 restrictions: No wake. No funeral Mass. No funeral. No friends stopping by.

Leroy, my uncle, was alone in a home he had always shared. And then his knee gave out and he fell. An ambulance raced him to a hospital. After a few days, he was given a cortisone shot. After a few more days, he was transferred to a facility for rehabilitation.

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A season of reunions, each full of tears, relief, and joy

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A season of reunions, each full of tears, relief, and joy

It had been 311 days since I’d seen my youngest grandchildren. We’d said goodbye the Monday before last Christmas in a parking lot in Connecticut. My son had rented a car for the occasion, and driven from Manhattan. His wife was back at their apartment packing. Two weeks later, they, their three children and Daisy, their dog, moved to Scotland.

That day in the parking lot of a strip mall, we spied a small restaurant, which was still serving food outside. It was a mild day for winter, but still chilly. We sat at separate, metal tables, with our jackets zipped and scarves around our necks. The kids ordered hot chocolate and chicken fingers. The adults drank coffee. All of us chatted about Christmas and the new year and what it would bring.

And we pretended to be happy.

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Welcome aboard the flight, but check these boxes first

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Welcome aboard the flight, but check these boxes first

Next time, I will tell you what it was like getting to be with my grandchildren after not seeing them for a year. Next time, I will tell you about Euan, the 8-year-old, and how big he’s grown, how he is devouring Harry Potter books, having seen all the movies and how, as we were out walking one day he paused in midsentence to point out a single, pink rose. “Isn’t it beautiful, Mimi?” he said. Next time I will tell you, too, about the 12-year-old and the 14-year-old.

For now though, COVID-19 continues to steal the show.

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A song, a pond, or a good book can make the pandemic feel far away

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A song, a pond, or a good book can make the pandemic feel far away

In the midst of this pandemic, which, like a monster from a 1950s horror movie feigns death but then springs to life again, I made a few discoveries. Because we didn’t travel this summer, I found some things close to home that made me forget, for at least a little while, this shape-changing creature that refuses to go away. I’ll start with Shirley Horn. I googled a song, “Here’s to Life,” because I love it and it led me to YouTube. And YouTube led me to her. I watched a clip from 1993, when this pianist and jazz singer performed with John Williams and The Boston Pops. And for a solid five minutes, I didn’t think about anything except this song because Horn infuses so much feeling into her lyrics that you feel as if you’re watching a movie, not simply listening to a person sing. Why had I never listened to her before?

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In this Land of I Don’t Know, I know all that I am missing

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In this Land of I Don’t Know, I know all that I am missing

I say out loud, every day, that I am so grateful for e-mail and FaceTime and WhatsApp, for all the technology that lets me see and talk to my grandchildren, though they are in Scotland and I am an ocean away. I try to remind myself how lucky I am. My son sends me photos of the kids in their school uniforms. They started school last week. He takes pictures on his phone and…

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After 16 long months, we’re finally getting to live again

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The bars were invisible, but they were there. In front of us. Behind us. Beside us. Inside us. We didn’t live in actual cages, but we were caged. For 16 unpredictable and unparalleled months, so many of us lived hunkered down in fear of the unknown. Our homes were our cages. We felt safe at home. We had groceries delivered and we disinfected them before putting them away. We wiped down everything: doorknobs, bannisters, remotes, our phones, the mail. We binge-watched TV. Played games. FaceTimed. Read books. Cooked. Baked. Ate. Slept.

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At a beautiful prom night, I began to believe in the future again

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At a beautiful prom night, I began to believe in the future again

On June 1, my daughter Julie asked if i would take pre-prom pictures of some Canton High seniors and I said yes, although I hadn’t picked up my camera in more than a year. I charged the battery, cleaned the lenses, formatted my SD card, packed my bag, and set off to the house where the seniors were gathered.

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In a world of tornadoes, remember the rainbows

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In a world of tornadoes, remember the rainbows

The tree in my front yard looks dead. It’s an eyesore, an ugly twig, not even 5 feet high, held upright by an equally ugly pole. Think Charlie Brown tree only without a hint of green. But take your fingernail and scratch the bark from the tree and a pale green line appears. Even in the tiniest branch, there is green. The tree is alive. What appears to be dead isn’t. It’s the lesson that spring teaches us over and over...

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Vaccinated, but still feeling stuck in pandemic purgatory

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Vaccinated, but still feeling stuck in pandemic purgatory

For months, I imagined what freedom, post-pandemic, would feel like. For many more months, I couldn’t imagine freedom at all. When lockdown began 13 months ago and we were all shut inside, confined to our homes, wiping down groceries that were delivered, disinfecting the mail, scrubbing our hands every five minutes, peering at the world through closed windows, all of us prisoners of something we could not see, I thought: I never imagined this. I never anticipated a virus that would change our lives.

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Birds and squirrels got us through, but now we long for humanity

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Birds and squirrels got us through, but now we long for humanity

A long time ago, there were oak trees in my front yard. Three of them in the beginning. And then one got sick and died and we had it cut down and carted away.

I loved those trees. They kept me company as I wrote. For years I watched birds nest in them and squirrels catapult from one to the other. The trees muffled the sound of traffic, too, though traffic was light then, so scarce that on warm days, with my window open, I could hear not just birds cawing and squirrels skittering, but leaves, even tender, spring leaves, rustling.

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Watching and escaping the world from a favorite chair

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Watching and escaping the world from a favorite chair

The chair was Judy Taylor’s idea. She has one in her bedroom, a big, comfortable chair. It’s where every day she sits for a little while and reads. We were with our husbands on a cruise ship, on vacation. Remember vacations? Lying around reading something compelling? We were both reading “The Couple Next Door,” sipping some sugary drink and thinking about nothing except how great the sun felt and what we were going to eat next. This is exactly what Judy and I were doing — reading and drinking and talking — when the conversation turned to her “reading chair” and how much she loved it. “You need to get one,” she told me.

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When there’s no way around it, we’ve just got to go through it

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When there’s no way around it, we’ve just got to go through it

“We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” is a children’s board book that my friend Anne gave me to read to my first grandchild, Lucy. I read it to her for years. It never captured me. I liked “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” much better. But Lucy liked the repetition of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” and when Adam came along, he liked it, too. “We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day! We’re not scared. Uh-uh! Grass! Long wavy grass. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”

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What we will remember about a year we’d just as soon forget

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What we will remember about a year we’d just as soon forget

I am trying to put a spin on it, trying to look back at 2020 and cherry-pick some good things that happened in this god-awful year. There have been good things, right? Babies born. So many babies. I see their pictures on Facebook: Haley’s son, Carter; Ali’s son, Benjamin; Emily’s daughter, Maeve; Meryl’s twin grandsons, Leo and William. In all the pictures the babies are beautiful and everyone looks happy…

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By telling their stories, we remember those we have lost

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By telling their stories, we remember those we have lost

I saved his letters, 301 typewritten pages, all single spaced, all caps. “SHAME ON YOU!” the first began. “YOU MADE ME CRY. I’M EIGHTY YEARS OLD AND YOU MADE ME CRY.” Ray Redican wrote this to me on Dec. 24, 1993. On Dec. 26, when it arrived in my mail, I picked up the phone and called him. This is the way our friendship began and the way it endured. He wrote and I called.

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