Little Sister's Joy is devotion to others
/The Boston Herald
Parent's age is measured not in years, but in memories
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My father was sick last week. The heat ambushed him. He has never been able to tolerate heat. He blames the malaria he had in the war for this. Before Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower marched him through Africa, he was fine, he says. After the war, he wasn't. The heat, since, has always slowed him down.
But it has never stopped him before.
Read MoreHe's Mr. Right - really he is
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Of course he was telling me a better way to prune the rose bush. That's what he does. He's Mr. I Have a Better Way of Doing Everything, a man with vision, practical in his assessments and, as he likes to remind me, always on target with his recommendations. "Just get a saw and get rid of the whole bush," he said last Sunday afternoon as I belatedly attempted to tend to a wild mass of dead wood and thorns that I hadn't bothered to look at all year. I had killed my rose bush with inattention and was now determined to bring it back to life with a little pruning, a little Miracle Grow and a lot of love…
Read MoreRosemary Clooney: Diva without artifice
/The Boston Herald
Public safety must trump privacy
/Boston Herald
Danger seems so clear and present
/Beverly Beckham
Fond memories of dads
/The Boston Herald
Mary was everyone's nice aunt
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Aunt Mary wasn't my aunt. But that's what I called her. That's what most everyone who met her through her nephew, George, called her.
"This is my Aunt Mary," he'd say. And the name stuck, for it was a perfect fit for a woman who was like a favorite aunt - the one who always likes what you're wearing and praises your food and admires what you've done to your house and tells you you have nice children, even on days when they're not being so nice.
Read MoreMuscular disease threatens all
/The Boston Herald
Abbreviations are taking over
/The Boston Hearld
Time to repay a giving coach
/The Boston Herald
Nuns falsely accused
/The Boston Herald
Post Sept 11, little things mean a lot
/The Boston Herald
Destruction will always mark the spot
/Boston Herald
Children's Unconditional Love is the Best Present We Ever Get
/Children's cards are the best. The ones made of construction paper and glue, signed in crayon by a child's small hand. TO THE BEST MOTHER IN THE HOLE WIDE WORLD. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY…
Read More'Spider-Man' Has Mom, Son in Same Web
/He's been grown and gone for so long that sometimes I think I dreamed him. Even his room is kind of gone - the striped gold wallpaper scraped off years ago, the trophies on his bureau, the signed baseballs, the football pennants, all stuffed in a box somewhere. Now the walls are painted yellow and the comforter is white and the curtains are lace…
Read MoreSproutings of spring verify the nation's faith
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I didn't expect to see the tulips bloom this spring. Planting them was an act of faith. I dug 100 holes in a patch of dirt in my front yard, placed a bulb in each, shoveled dirt over them, watered them, then forgot about them. Maybe they would survive the winter. Maybe they wouldn't. After Sept. 11, everything was a maybe.
Read MoreLove is natural, but it's hate that's learned
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While delegates from 57 Muslim nations sit around in Malaysia trying to come up with a definition of terrorism - using human beings as bombs to blow apart civilians is, most of them say, mere freedom fighting - the truth, as usual, gets buried under words. The truth is simple. Life is precious. Life is a gift. Life should be safeguarded, not sacrificed. So why isn't the preservation of human life the subject of the day instead of the ongoing rationalization for yet more murder?
Read MoreA Mild Day Springs a Memory
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You wonder what makes an ordinary day stand out in memory. Who takes the mental snapshots that we see when we look back through time? There are no real snapshots recording the day, because there was nothing special about it. Nothing special at all.
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