It began as such an ordinary morning. At 8:30 my husband and I boarded Continental Airlines Flight 847, wrestled a bag into an overhead, complimented ourselves on securing a coveted emergency exit row seat and settled back for a flight to Puerto Rico, with a connection in Newark. We were headed for a cruise. The first time the captain came over the loudspeaker it was to announce a small mechanical problem…
Read MoreI hadn't been back in more than two years to the place that feeds my soul. I went to other places and I thought, this is fine. I don't need one particular plot of earth where the sea meets the sky and I meet God. I found God in people and in landscapes: on my walks with the dog, in my small garden. And I convinced myself that this was enough. I thought I had become wiser. God is everywhere, I said. All I had to do was look and I would see.
Read MoreIt started with Great Woods. I mean the Tweeter Center. I dialed information to get the number, heard "Welcome to Verizon" and thought, not just that Verizon sounds like an antibiotic (Erythromycin? Tetracycline? Verizon?), but what's with all these companies changing their names?
Read MoreOf course he had to die sometime. He was 86 and much as we wish it could be, people don't live forever. But it seemed that he would. It seemed as if he would always be sitting in his rocking chair on his front porch, his wife beside him, or making his way down Chapman Street to the L'il White Store, Cassie's now, but always the L'il White to him.
Read MoreAl was on his roof Tuesday morning, broom in hand, sweeping. Al, my across-the-street neighbor, is hardly a spring chicken. He should not be climbing ladders. He especially should not be climbing a ladder onto his roof because it is the kind of roof a child draws, a steep upside down V. But there he was climbing, then crawling like a crayfish, standing intermittently to out-out-damn-spot, some spot only he could see. Who, in his right mind, sweeps his roof?
Read MoreMy mother's birthday was yesterday. She would have been 76, not old by today's standards. But she died when she was 63, and I lost her many years before. I should be used to not having a mother by now.
But you never get used to it.
Read MoreShe walks more slowly these days. She doesn't bound to the door, she ambles. She doesn't rush at visitors. She saunters. Her bark is as strong as it has always been and her tail remains in overdrive, but her legs buck and stall, old legs suddenly, though Molly's heart is still young. She has such skinny legs for a big dog, legs like a horse, legs that she could always depend on. How many mornings did she lunge up the stairs, hurl herself onto our bed, dance and bark and groan and nudge us awake…
Read MoreIt's a personal thing with Gary Titus. He'll tell you this. Sherm Feller was his friend. How good a friend? Titus and his wife, Sarah, named their son Louis "Sherman" Titus "to keep Sherm in our memory always." Last spring when Titus logged on to the Boston Red Sox Web site and was greeted by his friend's familiar voice, "Ladies and gentlemen - boys and girls," he was thrilled. The voice belonged on the site. Sherm Feller was and always will be the voice of Fenway Park.
Read MoreHelen McLean died the way she lived, trying not to inconvenience anyone, accepting what she couldn't change. The diagnosis was cancer and the prognosis was bad. But she didn't fight it or the doctors who gave her the news. She simply went ahead and did what she had to do, the way she did what she had to do her whole life. We build statues of men who, under the gun, stand and fight when they could have run. We call them heroes for their valor, and we honor and respect them. Their images adorn our capitals and parks. Their life stories fill our history books. We even write songs about them. The bravery of men is legend…
Read MoreI 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?
Read MoreThe new gym rat in the family has been nagging me. He starts even before I open my eyes. "Power Pump is today. You really should go," he says at 5 a.m. The clock radio has just clicked on. The announcer's voice is a whisper because the radio takes time to warm up. Mr. Stretch and Bend doesn't have this problem. I said I'd go to the gym in the spring. Spring has arrived. He has deemed it his duty to get me there…
Read More"Fred said the world has changed since I left it. Is it true?" Sal asks. Sal has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's Disease. For six years his world has been a hospital room. Every day people bring in news of the world. Every day television supplies images and radio fills in…
Read MoreThe warnings are posted on every piece of gym equipment, at the bottom of a long list of carefully written instructions. They are in clear, dark print and are easy to read: "Attention users: Failure to comply could result in serious injury or even death." Nothing new here. We live in a world full of warnings…
Read MoreAnne used to live on my street, a quarter of a mile away. A million years ago when our children were small we hung out together, at her house in the winter and at my house in the summer. Lauren and Amy were best friends. They were 8 and 9 then, bright, fanciful little girls who were always doing cartwheels and singing and playing dress up and creating dramas that they insisted we watch…
Read MoreHe 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…
Read MoreWhat makes a child kill? We look for the big reasons: divorce, drugs, a history of being abused, a loaded gun, revenge, despair. But what if there is no big reason? What if it's a thousand little ones?
Read MoreA day late and a dollar short. That about sums up this worst storm in 50 years. Monster winds. Record snowfall. Two weather systems converging and stalling. There hasn't been this much hype since the release of "Heaven's Gate," another zealously over advertised bomb. Winter's wrath? Storm of the century? Right. We've been here before how many times?
Read MoreI am trying to look at the bright side of things. Count my blessings. Give thanks for the moment and not wish the moment away. The bright side: This isn't the Yukon. The ice on the front walk has finally melted, making both the mailman and me happy. The days are getting longer, never mind that they're cold and gray and cheerless. And we are on the right side of the year. This is not, thank God, November…
Read MoreMy sixth-grade teacher, Mr. O'Neil, explained the derivation of the word "salary" way back in 1957, when I didn't make a salary and didn't much care about the salaries of anyone else. He said, out of the blue, the way he said a lot of things, that in Roman times salt was scarce and of such value that Roman soldiers were paid with it. "It was called 'salarium,"' he said. "Salarium became salary."…
Read MoreTom Lehmann, 48, was buried last Friday after a three-year battle with cancer. It was a fierce battle. When he was diagnosed, the cancer had already spread from his colon to his liver. A succession of experimental therapies bought him time, but at a big price. The treatments slowed the disease, but slowed him down, too...
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