Dear Abby misses a beat with answer to 'Trying'

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Dear Abby misses a beat with answer to 'Trying'

I think you've been kidnapped. I think someone from the school of It's All About Me has commandeered your computer. It must be. I've been reading you since I could read, which makes me certain that you could never have written the response to "Trying to Do the Right Thing" in last Friday's paper. Can we talk about this? What's happening in Los Angeles? Are you at the controls or have you been replaced? Or is it that you've been in L.A. so long that the Me, Myself and I culture has finally worn off on you, too?

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For those of a certain age, good manners make the man

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For those of a certain age, good manners make the man

He didn't know me from Adam. We'd just met, talked a little, exchanged the usual pleasantries. He used to write sports for the Herald, he said. He was originally from Somerville. He was married for 43 years. He was man of a certain age. We left the university together because we were both going home instead of staying for a dinner. He was taking the T back to Melrose. I was hailing a cab back to the paper…

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Today's sound of music

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Today's sound of music

They are called "audio systems" now, micro component systems or mini component systems or full-size systems with separate components. Micro is small. Mini is bigger. Full size is the biggest. Boom boxes, portable things that people take to the beach, are neither micro nor mini, (though they're smaller than both) and are sold in a separate department, next to water-resistant sports Walkmen and clock radios. All I wanted was a small stereo for a friend who's in a hospital. Something with an off-on button, a tape deck and a three-disc CD player. Something that a nurse or a nurse's aide wouldn't have to call maintenance to use. On. Off. AM. FM. Simple? Hardly.

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No time to stop to let a funeral drive on by

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No time to stop to let a funeral drive on by

I cut her some slack, the not-so-young woman who gave me the finger and mouthed the companion epithet. I thought, OK, maybe she's from another country and doesn't know the rule about funeral processions having the right of way. Maybe this cortege of cars with headlights on in the middle of a sunny day, funeral flags on each roof, was a new experience for her.

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Didn't beauty used to come from within?

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Didn't beauty used to come from within?

Of course I read every word of Boston magazine's cover story, "Do You Need A Facelift?" The question seemed personally addressed to me. I hate the lines on my face and my droopy eyelids and the age spots on my hands and the creeping invisibility that comes with age. And I envy all the women I know who have had surgery. They look young and taut and confident.

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Saying goodbye to childhood

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I take the trophies off my daughter's bookshelf, earned in dance and gymnastics and softball, and wrap them in newspaper and put them in a box and write on the box in Magic Marker, "Julie's trophies." Then I do the same with the plaques on her wall and the dolls on her dresser and the stuffed animals on her bed and her schoolbooks and notebooks and photographs and Disney figurines.

I am cleaning out my youngest daughter's room, packing away her things because it is time. She doesn't live here anymore. I am converting her bedroom into a sitting room, taking down her posters and repainting the walls, emptying her bureau and desk drawers of all her childhood things to make room for new things.

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Sometimes the song must end

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Sometimes the song must end

My mother used to sing. Every morning I'd come downstairs and there she'd be standing at the kitchen sink, singing some tune, even if it were winter and dark and the coffee hadn't yet perked. She'd hum as she put on her makeup and sing softly as she dressed, and in the car she would always turn up the radio and sing along with Peggy Lee. She cleaned the house to music, the record player at full volume, as she belted out tunes from "Gypsy" or "Annie Get Your Gun."

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A place of her own - at last

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A place of her own - at last

She moved out the way she was born, in the midst of a crisis that overshadowed her. So her leaving was hardly noticed. She left home amid, "What's the prognosis on Gram?" and phone calls and tears.

She slipped into the world pretty much the same way. Then it was her other grandmother who was fighting for her life. She was born quickly, as if she knew there were other things to be done. We have pictures of her older brother and younger sister at their births. But there is not a single photograph of her.

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When did she really grow up?

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When did she really grow up?

Every night, after I tucked her into bed, I would sing to her, a silly song, a made-up song, our song. "Stay little, stay little, little little stay, little stay little stay little." She would giggle, and I would smile. The next morning I would say: "Look at you. You grew. The song didn't work." I sang that song for years, and every time I finished, she would cross her heart and promise she wouldn't grow any more.

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Being on the Internet is more addictive than smoking

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Being on the Internet is more addictive than smoking

It reminds me of when I was a little kid, stealing a snuffed-out cigarette from my father's ashtray, lighting up, taking a puff and feeling dizzy and giddy and grown up all at once. I hated the taste of cigarettes. I have always preferred Oreos and ice cream. But there was something so seductive about the idea of smoking that I worked on liking it for a while. This was what grown-ups did and I wanted to be a grown-up. Logging on to the Internet the first time gave me that same heady feeling…

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Hand-in-hand, brothers all

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Hand-in-hand, brothers all

A few days before Christmas I saw them walking along the street near the viaduct. It was sunset. The sky was red. The trees were black. There was no sidewalk and no other pedestrians except these two young boys. They were brothers, you could tell. They had the same straight, sandy hair. They wore the same knit stocking caps and the same loose-fitting jackets, only in different sizes, and they walked in the same loping way. One was about 12 and the other 5…

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High heels, hairdos and dates will never take away `my baby'

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High heels, hairdos and dates will never take away `my baby'

NEW YORK - I still call her "my baby," and she puts up with this and with me, with an understanding that goes beyond her 16 1/2 years. She allows me this indulgence, this solitary pretense, though we both know she isn't a baby anymore.

The knowledge for her is old. But for me, it's new. I have seen her through such myopic eyes. Even dressed up for a formal dance, she has seemed to me just a little girl pretending. All of the outward signs - her learning to drive, her staunch independence, the bedroom door closed while she talks on the phone for hours, the calls from boys, the flowers, the whispers, the cogent arguments about right and wrong, good and bad, the talks about college, about careers, about the rest of her life - should have alerted me to the truth.

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Catholics will sing when there's only one `Amen,' one `Alleluia'

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I don't know if an ambassador can do this. Probably not. It will probably take divine intervention on a grand scale. An edict by the pope or something. But maybe Ray Flynn can get the ball rolling. Or put a bug in the pope's ear, to coin a cliche or two.

"Here ye, here ye, Catholic Americans. Get your act together. Learn how to open your mouths, raise your voices to Heaven and praise the Lord."

We're bad at this, you know. Catholics do not sing. Protestants belt out hymns with the passion of converts, but we Catholics don't even bother to mouth the words. We stand silent in our churches and let the organists and the one vocalist who substitutes for a choir do all the work.

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If New Yorkers are always this nice, we'll take Manhattan!

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If New Yorkers are always this nice, we'll take Manhattan!

NEW YORK - I awaken to sirens these days and horns blaring and scrapes and thuds, trucks picking up or dropping off something. City sounds, foreign sounds to me.

There's an air-conditioner in the bedroom, but we sleep with it off and the window open. Closed, this place is hermetically sealed. We could be anywhere - in a barn, in a bubble.

I want to remember where I am: New York City.

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So that's life in the Big City!

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The news is full of mayhem - all over the country, all over the world. That's what news is. Man bludgeons man. Man hurts and hates and avenges and rebukes and betrays and alienates.

We drive from Boston to Manhattan and as the local radio station fades and the New York one becomes strong, only the names of the victims change. The stories are the same: Child shot; man stabbed; woman raped; teens killed; girl attacked by gang; terrorists vow revenge.

Bad news is like the moon at night. You can't get away from it. It follows us all.

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Daughter's `new' clothes show '70s fashions are right on

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Daughter's `new' clothes show '70s fashions are right on

The 21-year-old keeps appearing at my office door in clothes I know I threw away two decades ago.

"What do you think, Mom? Don't you just love this outfit?"

This "outfit," the one she's modeling now, is the worst of the lot. It's a black-and-white polka-dot-one-piece, who-knows-what-to-call it.

"It's three different fashions in one," she explains. "It's a bell-bottom jumpsuit with an empire waist and a halter-top front. Remember those halter tops you used to wear?"

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Fate takes the next step

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Fate takes the next step

In the morning, the gully between the trees into which the car had plunged, seems smaller than it did at midnight. I drive past and am amazed that an automobile fit in that spot, never mind landed there. A few inches either way, and the driver would have been hurt, might have been killed. The car windshield was smashed, the front end shattered; but the driver emerged unscathed. She'd been wearing a seat belt, and an angel no doubt was sitting beside her.

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