It's strange what your brain decides to remember, what it puts in first place and shuffles to the head of the class. It's not rule-bound like a teacher. The brain doesn't select the smartest or the best looking or even the cleverest memory to take out of mothballs. It's almost as if it reaches into a grab bag of life and pulls out whatever it finds. A snippet of conversation here. A splice of an afternoon there.
Read MoreThe box arrived last week when my husband and I were in Canada. My neighbor, Al, brought it in and left it on the kitchen table. He does this. He brings in the mail and the papers, takes care of the dog, leaves the front light burning when he knows we're coming home and Katherine, his wife, waters my plants, and offers me tea, no matter what time it is when I knock on her door. How did I get these wonderful neighbors? How is it that…
Read MoreIn Whistler, British Columbia, where snow is why people come and skiing is what people do, there is no snow. There is only rain and more rain. Day after day of it.
It will snow soon, people say, looking up at a thick, gray sky that is more November than December. There is no bite in the air, only a chill. There…
Read MoreEvalyn had her bone-marrow transplant a month ago. The words take a single breath. One exhale and they're said. Even their meaning fails to hint at all a transplant entails. The word is ordinary. Transplant evokes an ivy grown too big for its pot, upended and plunked down in a bigger, prettier container; or a sprawling bush dug up from the front yard and moved to the back. Transplants are a part of gardening. A little sun, a lot of water and transplanted things grow sturdier. Even a human transplant is just a person raised in one place who now lives in another.
Read MoreThe house I grew up in has changed hands again. I saw the new owner standing in the yard as a friend and I drove past. I do this sometimes, drive by to look and to remember. My father paid $ 10,000 for this house in 1954. The new owner paid $ 280,000. But the house isn't just more expensive. It's changed in many ways. It's bigger. One of the owners built on and up. And because of this, the yard is smaller. The trellis is gone, along with the rose bushes my mother planted and coaxed to grow. And the sprawling, silvery spidery things that lined the front walk have disappeared, as have the shrubs that separated our yard from the neighbor's, my mother's rock garden and the green awnings she scrimped and saved for.
Read MoreHe would say it's a reach because he never believed in these things. And I admit it is a reach. There is no direct connection between Pope John Paul II's announcement Thursday that he has added five more mysteries to the rosary and my friend Father Coen. Except for the connection in my mind….
Read MoreIt’s just a piece of orange felt that was made into a mitten so many years ago its loss should mean nothing now. There were two mittens then, plus a giant, orange, Ernie head.
Ernie, as in Bert and Ernie from “Sesame Street,” was a Halloween costume I made for my youngest child at least 20 years ago. I don't sew now. I should never have sewed then. I botched everything. I stitched left sleeves into right armholes…
Read MoreBoston Herald
Boston Herald
Nothing had prepared her for this. Jennifer Johnstone was a healthy 26-year-old, 35 weeks pregnant with her second child, a girl, whom she and her husband Scott had already named Madison. She had ultrasound pictures of Madison too. One showed her so tiny that it was difficult to see her as anything but an outline. In another, Jennifer could almost see her daughter's smile. "This is your baby sister," she'd tell Cameron, now age 3. "Do you want to feel her kick?" she'd ask, taking his hand and guiding it with her own.
Read MoreBoston Herald
Boston Herald
Boston Herald
Boston Herald
Boston Herald
Boston Herald
Boston Herald
They wanted an apology. As much as they needed the man who killed Christine Griffiths punished and put away, they needed his remorse, too. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I wish I could take it back." They ached for this. But what they got was a man who refused to even look at them, who kept his head bowed and his eyes lowered as one by one they took the stand and talked about a young woman each of them had loved…
Read More"The Dairy Queen has, what do you call those things?" Ron asks his wife of 36 years.
"McFlurries?"
"No. No. It's a 'd' word."
"T? Tiramisu?"
"Not 't,' Maryann! 'D.' " Ron and Maryann are visiting from Alabama. They are in the family room sitting on the couch eating Healthy Choice Coffee Almond Fudge ice cream. The Healthy Choice apparently has triggered memories of a less healthy choice. The subject of the Dairy Queen has come out of nowhere.
Read MoreHer paws are more white than black these days, and her muzzle is white and the place on her belly where she loves to be scratched is all white, too. My dog is old.
She sleeps most of the day, waking only to bark at the mailman, to wag and woof at anyone who comes to the door, and to indulge in her favorite pastime, which is, of course, eating. Molly loves food - all food. When I open the refrigerator, no matter if she is half a house away and in a dead sleep, she comes running. At least she tries to run…
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