Dancing down Memory Lane rouses the power of love

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Dancing down Memory Lane rouses the power of love

Chris paved the way. I didn’t know this when he was alive, how one human being would alter us, how one human being would show us a world we might have looked away from had we not known him.

This dawned on me as I sat with my family at the wedding of Chris’s grandnephew a few weeks ago. And this realization has stayed with me, that Chris McLean didn’t change just my family and me. He opened the eyes of everyone who knew him. And then everyone who knew him opened even more eyes.

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Leaving part of my heart so far away

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Leaving part of my heart so far away

I’m in Florida visiting my uncle LeRoy. He’s sleeping as I write this, although it’s nearly 10 a.m. and he is always up and about by 7. But it’s dark as night in his house. And quiet. The air conditioner makes some noise but not much. He has it set to 80 degrees.

There’s no reason for my uncle to be up early. That’s what I think. It’s a Sunday morning so there’s nowhere he has to be. And then I think there’s nowhere he has to be every morning.

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What else is drifting away from us besides the moon?

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What else is drifting away from us besides the moon?

“The moon is slowly drifting away from us.”

I am at my desk reading this in “Interesting Facts,” an e-mail that pops up in my news feed every morning. I’m a sucker for interesting facts. I copy and paste the best of them into my notes because as interesting as a fact may be (100 lightning strikes hit the Earth’s surface every second!), I forget it minutes after I’ve sworn I’ll remember it forever.

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The questions I wished I’d asked my father

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The questions I wished I’d asked my father

Sometimes we shared a cake. I have a picture that proves this. It’s of my father and me, blowing out candles on a double-layer birthday cake festooned with confectionery flowers, which my mother made for the two of us when I was 6 and he was 30.

In the picture, I am seated before the cake doing more looking at than blowing out the candles my mother has arranged. Thirty-one for him, seven for me, the extras for good luck. My mother was always courting good luck.

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Two little girls laughing until someone told us to stop

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Two little girls laughing until someone told us to stop

When we were kids, I was jealous because Janet Butler’s birthday came three weeks before mine. It was a big deal back then, growing older, growing closer to what we called “grown up.”

Janet, who was born on Jan. 29, lorded it over me when she was 9 and I was still 8, when she was 10 and I was still 9, when she turned 13 and I was still 12. “Baby,” she’d say, but not in a mean way. She was never mean. She was a tease. She was funny. She’d sing-song the word “baby” and then laugh.

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Like a warm coat, memories hug us like those we have lost

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Like a warm coat, memories hug us like those we have lost

I told her I loved her coat, which was an almost-to-the-floor black and gray wool that seemed to be embracing the woman who was standing before me. That’s the feeling I had, that the coat was hugging her.

We were leaving a Christmas party, my husband and I, saying our goodbyes and there was Harriet, leaving, too. And I said, “Your coat is so pretty,” and she smiled and stroked the soft wool near the collar. “It was my daughter’s,” she said, and there it was, out in the open, something we seldom talk about, something we back away from every day: death.

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Keep doing whatever prompts you to say, ‘I love the journey’

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Keep doing whatever prompts you to say, ‘I love the journey’

“One step in front of the other until the road runs out!” That’s what a friend texted a few weeks ago.

I had texted her. (Why do we not talk to our friends anymore? What has happened to long, meandering conversations?)

I had done what we all do now, picked up my phone after watching her woo a crowd, after a night of smiles and applause, typing to this friend who is a singer, “Bravo!” and “Great job!” the things you say when someone blows you away.

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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 daily phone call, and the love that endures

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A daily phone call, and the love that endures

He never complains. I call him between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. every night and he is always upbeat.

“Hi Beverly,” he says and I hear a smile in his voice.

“Hi LeRoy,” I answer, and because he’s smiling, I smile, too.

LeRoy is my father’s youngest brother, the last of the Curtin clan, my grandmother’s baby, my only living uncle. He was born 94 years ago this Sunday, on Oct. 17, in Cambridge when Cambridge had more factories than universities.

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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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A ‘plethora’ of ‘delectable’ words, and even more love

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A ‘plethora’ of ‘delectable’ words, and even more love

Amy has called me Mimi since the afternoon we met. She was 5 then and though I wasn’t her Mimi, my grandson Adam, who also was 5, called me Mimi so she did, too. I’m still not Amy’s Mimi. Not officially. But unofficially, in our patchwork quilt of a family, I am. I am Mimi and Amy is my granddaughter because she is the daughter of my daughter’s partner, and until the world comes up with better words for what we mean to each other, we’re stuck using words that don’t quite fit. Which is ironic considering that Amy Hylen is a stickler for words.

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When my Aunt Lorraine was young, beautiful, and all mine

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When my Aunt Lorraine was young, beautiful, and all mine

My cousin Darlene sent the photo in a text message. Our cousin Jan had e-mailed it to her. I had never seen it before. It’s a black and white shot of two girls on a beach, young women you’d call them today, but girl is who each was back then, in the early 1950s. Beautiful girls, both of them. One salt, one pepper, the blonde in a black bathing suit, the raven-haired one in white…

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A blown kiss kindles memories of the young mother I once was

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A blown kiss kindles memories of the young mother I once was

He’s a toddler and he lives next door and because I have been nowhere for months, I watch him more than I would have pre-COVID. I watch him with wonder the way I watched the trees this spring grow from spindly, gray sticks into the lush, green canopies they are now. Pre-COVID, I wouldn’t have been dazzled by the slow, daily growth of both the trees and the boy. I would have noticed spring in all its beauty, of course. And I would have noticed the toddling boy, too, smiled and waved at him before I got into my car. But my head would have been elsewhere. I’d have been thinking about traffic, and where I was going, and did I have my phone? These things would have been my focus, not the little boy next door…

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Kind, good, caring people can help get us through these times

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Kind, good, caring people can help get us through these times

My 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…

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With the world upside down, I’m learning grace from my grandchildren

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With the world upside down, I’m learning grace from my grandchildren

Charlotte has been home from school for two months now, shut in with adults and her 16-year-old brother. She turned 13 last month. A big birthday, 13. Her mother sent out an e-mail to family and friends. Let’s have a surprise drive-by parade! It rained on her birthday. But Charlotte didn’t care. She woke to balloons and cake and presents and hugs and smiles and Happy Birthday signs strung everywhere. Outside was raw and ugly but inside was just about perfect…

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An ‘angel flying too close to the ground’ gets to soar

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An ‘angel flying too close to the ground’ gets to soar

Sometimes, when I am trying to cross the street in front of my house, I count the cars that whiz past. Forty-eight is my all-time high. Mostly it’s about 30 before someone lets me cross. I live on what used to be a country road but is now a busy cut-through. By the time I get from my front yard to the sidewalk across the street, I’m generally sour on the human race. That’s one reality. Here is another…

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