I fell off some machine at the gym the other day. Yes, at the gym. I finally went back. COVID had made me stop. Necessity made me return. I signed up for a few sessions with a trainer who showed me what to do. Then I went back on my own to practice what I’d learned.
That’s when I ended up on the gym floor, arms and legs askew, more embarrassed than hurt.
Read MoreI was 10 and in sixth grade when I got hooked on a TV Western. My father got hooked, too. Every chance we could ― but not always because my father was a police officer and worked the night shift — we would sit side-by-side on the green living room couch and trade 1957 for the late 1860s. That’s what “Wagon Train” did. It transported us.
Read MoreI cannot pronounce Luhansk and Lysychansk, because I have stopped watching television news. And because I no longer hear these names spoken, I don’t know how to say them.
I stopped watching the news every night because it is all calamity and conjecture interrupted by ads paid for by pharmaceutical companies, which would go bankrupt if, tomorrow morning, we all woke up well. And because the nightly news teaches me nothing I can’t learn by reading, I switched to print months ago.
Read MoreNext 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.
Read More“Heart fatigue.” That’s how I read it. But it was “Heat fatigue” a friend had written. On Facebook. Her dog had been overheated so she soaked a bath towel with cold water from a hose and draped it over his back. “He seems to really like that,” she wrote, posting a picture of her dog at peace, eyes closed, ears up, sleeping the sleep of the untroubled. I envied the dog. I looked at the towel and wished there were as simple a solution for heart fatigue…
Read MoreJuly arrives this week. July. Impossible. March April May June That’s how long we have spent inside obeying the rules. Having our groceries delivered. Washing doorknobs. Disinfecting counters and floors and packages. Staying 6 feet apart from anyone not under our roof. Staying 6 feet apart even from the people we love…
Read MoreMy friend Elaine is not the only one reaching out and doing what she can to give meaning to these strange and uncertain days. Yesterday, I received a video from Francesca, a woman I’ve known since our kids were in high school plays together. The video was of a Halloween party 25 years ago. I didn’t remember the party and neither did my daughter, but there she was on film with all her theater friends in our kitchen, dressed up as characters they’d played, talking into the camera. Francesca’s son had filmed this…
Read MoreThis is what haunts me. That Bella Bond's horrific murder was not a single act of violence, an aberration in an up-to-then perfect, storybook life. But that this little girl suffered every day. Conceived in a drug-induced haze in an Occupy Boston tent, she never met her father. Prosecutors say she was murdered on a mattress on a cluttered floor…
Read MoreAt first glance, George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" has nothing to do with Charlie Wilson in "Charlie Wilson's War." But with some help from my grandson, Adam, I learned otherwise.
It takes just one caring person to change the world. That's what my grandson, Adam, learned at school last month.
Read MoreFive hours in a car. It's a long time for a 5-year-old to be confined. But Lucy never complained. Not a tear. Not a tantrum. Not even a pout.
My granddaughter was happy, listening to Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," (sung by Julie Andrews; the child has good taste) and singing along. She ate chicken fingers in a nice restaurant overlooking the water, then she was back in her car seat, singing again.
Read MoreJudith Melisi has been on a mission for more than a year now. But last June it became personal.
For months the Halifax mother had been trying to alert the owners of the health club where she works out to the dangers she saw in the child-care room. Candy that little ones could choke on brought in by older kids. Hot coffee brought in by a worker. The bathroom door left open. An electric outlet exposed.
Read MoreWhen I was looking for a dog a few years ago, I came across the Metro South Adoption Center, the satellite shelter for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
A friend suggested the place, which is located on a rural street in Brockton. I took my grandson, Adam. He was 2 at the time.
I expected a few dogs and cats, not rooms full of animals waiting to be adopted. But there they were, a Disney-esque lineup: rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, birds, mice, dogs, cats, even a rat.
Read MoreIt's entertainment. Fluff, not to be taken seriously. And yet, as I watch "American Idol," the contestants all teary because Simon or Paula laugh at their performance or bluntly tell them they can't sing, I find myself thinking about my father at 18.
Read MoreThere is not a single photograph, not a frame of film, not even an artist's rendering, of the biggest presence at last Tuesday's historic inauguration.
No mention in the daily papers the next day. No quips. No cartoons. No newscasters' analytic buzz.
The world watched, the world saw. And yet no one said.
Read MoreGreat, thick, ugly clouds of smoke rose in the air, turning a blue sky black, then stopped and spiraled downward, rolling, one after another, like creatures from a horror movie, down the hills, over burning brush, and onto the deserted road just a median strip away from where my husband and I were stuck in traffic.
Read MoreThis is what "internationally renowned" Sherman J. Silber, M.D., writes in his "completely revised and updated" book "How to Get Pregnant," published by Little Brown and Co. last August: "The biggest fear of most pregnant women is that their child will be abnormal, and the most common abnormality they worry about is Down syndrome. ... These children are severely retarded mentally, and they usually die before their thirtieth birthday." He also writes: "We can prevent couples from having to face the horror of giving birth to children with otherwise devastating genetic defects such as Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, mental retardation, etc., that terrify every woman who ever gets pregnant."
Read Moret's eight in the morning and my husband and I are talking about laying stones around the periphery of the garden, big stones, more boulder than brick, in an effort to keep the dirt in and the rabbits out. It's a sensible plan, except for my worry about the little kids who cut through the garden and race down its slope. "Maybe stones are a bad idea," I say to my husband. "What if the kids fall?" "Maybe living near a street is a bad idea," he says, meaning you can't protect children from everything…
Read MoreWhen I brush my granddaughter Lucy's hair and put it in a ponytail, I always kiss the back of her neck. And she giggles. She is 3. She talks. She dances. She goes to school. She plays house and tea, and kick ball and follow the leader. She loves books and Bambi and church and playing with her cousin Adam. Lucy has Down syndrome. She looks and acts more like a 2-year-old than a 3-year-old. But is this so awful? Don't we say, "Children grow up too fast"? Lucy isn't growing up too fast. She's taking her time.
Read MoreAdam is my prism. I look at life through his eyes. He is 20 months old, and everything is new to him. And so far, everything is good. He's loved. He's healthy. He sees the world as a safe place. I know the world isn't safe. And it scares me sometimes, the difference between what he sees and what I know. Life is fragile. It's why we swaddle infants, and put bumper pads in cribs and seat belts in cars and inoculate against disease. It's why parents don't sleep some nights, many nights, worrying about all that can go wrong.
Read MoreA long time ago, when my daughter was 14, she had a homework assignment: Choose six people, dead or alive, real or fictional, with whom you would want to be stuck on a deserted island.I assumed I'd be one of them. Her brother was, and her godfather, and Mary Poppins and Matafu, a resourceful young boy in a book she was reading, and Doogie Howser, a TV doctor.
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