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 MoreA 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.
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 MoreBefore I was an adult, I never heard my father swear. Not even damn or hell.
I’m sure he knew his share of curse words but he didn’t use profanity around me. Nobody I knew did except for my friend’s mother who said things like, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, give me patience,” and “Sweet God in Heaven, don’t make me have to come upstairs and get you,” which she claimed were prayers of intercession, not curse words. And my Uncle Frank, whom my aunt started to date when I was around 8, and whose language was salty because, my father explained, “Frank is in the Coast Guard,” leaving me to believe that the sea, which to me was Nantasket Beach, was as full of colorful words swimming about as it was of fish.
Read MoreMy brain is acting out. It is in high dudgeon. I say “Help,” and it says “No.” I say “Please,” and it slams a door. I put a stick of butter in the microwave to soften and then forget to add it to the blueberry muffins. I decide to take a walk and then walk in and out of my house a half dozen times because I forget first my scarf, then my AirPods, then my phone, my glasses, my mask, a tissue, hand sanitizer. If I didn’t forget so much, if I weren’t always searching for things, my Fitbit would have nothing to record.
Read More“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!”
Read MoreA children’s book has made me feel a little better about all that’s going on in the world right now. Not complacent better, or less interested better. Just better.
Who knows how long I’ll feel this way. A day? A week? Until I foolishly watch World News Tonight, bad things from every corner of the earth, the tragic and trivial, crammed into a 30-minus-8-minutes-for-commercials slot? Until the middle of the night when sleep is impossible and everything bad that ever was, is, or will be kidnaps my brain? Until it’s next month or next year and we’re still in the same mess we are in today, with not just a virus killing us but a virulence that is as deadly…
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 MoreOn July 15, the magazine GQ proclaimed on its website that the people of Boston are the worst dressed in the country.
This should have been a lighthearted summer story, raising ire and eyebrows, but with a wink, too. We're just teasing, Boston. We just want you and everyone else to read our magazine!
But what was silly turned serious when writer John B. Thompson, in a poor attempt at humor, penned these words: ``Due to so much local inbreeding, Boston suffers from a kind of Style Down Syndrome, where a little extra ends up ruining everything.''
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 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 MoreFirst things first: "Tropic Thunder" is not an intentionally mean movie that denigrates the developmentally delayed. It is a comedy that pokes fun at Hollywood's preposterous and stereotypical portrayal of all the people Hollywood thinks it knows but doesn't. A big vulgar, way over-the-top film, it's a series of fun-house mirrors exaggerating the bloated egos of actors, producers, agents, and the never-ending sham that is pretense.
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 MoreI like to believe that it's a lack of thought and not meanness that makes people use words that hurt. That they're going with the flow, following the crowd, saying what everyone else is saying with no intent to wound.
But words do wound.
Read MoreIt's not something we talked about, and we talked about everything. But not this. Not then. Not now. Not ever. Our imagined husbands might go off to fight a war someday, we said, and our sons, if we had sons, might someday be called to fight. We were, even as small children, familiar with battle. We'd read the poetry my father had written in combat. We'd watched "The Fighting Sullivans." But we never imagined the kind of war we're mired in now. We never anticipated raising a child and seeing him grown and married and settled, then suddenly unsettled and terrifyingly vulnerable. We never expected that at 35 he'd be called to serve.
Read MoreHer baby was 12 hours old. Her husband had gone home to get his parents. Her parents were in the cafeteria. She was with a teenage cousin when a stranger in street clothes - he never introduced himself, never said "Good afternoon, I'm Dr. So-and-So," walked into her hospital room and over to the bassinet and began inspecting the baby. "What are you doing?" the new mother - my daughter - asked.
Read More"Is Religion Good Medicine?" is the question on Newsweek's cover. "God and Health." Is there a connection?
Some experts say yes. Some say no. Prayer works. Prayer doesn't.
In the end, the article says nothing new. But that's no surprise. We pray for the big things. We want the miracle. "Ask and you shall receive." And when we ask and don't get exactly what we beg for, we think, it didn't work. My prayers weren't answered.
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