Hundreds of people could tell this story, maybe thousands. It could be told in Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Korean, English - the kind the queen speaks - and the language of the streets. Old people could tell it and young people, too, and though the words would be different, all the stories would be the same: ”This is how Sister Eustace helped me," each would begin…
Read MoreHer mother bought her the bee costume. She found it at Old Navy. It's a plush, sturdy thing, which, hanging on a rack even without a face, resembled a giant bee. But put a baby in it and it was a bee for sure. "An angry bee," her mother said, though Lucy looked anything but angry. Perplexed, maybe. Curious. (Why is everyone going "bzzz bzzz"?) But definitely not angry.
The costume has two layers. The bottom is a brown snuggly sleeper, and the top - the bee part - is yellow and brown and BIG…
Read MoreThe wallpaper was gray with flourishes of pink and magenta running through it, sprigs that looked like feathers on an old lady's hat, or the kind of pen George Washington would have used. It covered the living room walls and a stairwell in the house where I grew up, a small cape built in 1953. I remember the wallpaper vividly, not just because…
Read MoreSometimes I pretend I'm her mother. That's OK, isn't it? Sometimes, when I'm walking my granddaughter all over town, I look up and see how much the town has changed in 35 years and how much I have changed, too…
Read MoreLast Sunday, in Roman Catholic churches around the world, the Gospel told the familiar tale of a rich man's quest for Paradise.
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," Jesus said.
This is a bold statement. But what does it mean? That the rich are doomed? That in the afterlife the poor finally get what they never had on Earth?
Read MoreWe look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough. - Ralph Ellison
Especially these mornings. You wonder why anyone hasn't written a song about them. October deserves music and lyrics, long sighs, and an emcee's "Ta da!" Pink dawns that bloom into sparkling white days. Clean, clear air with a chill that somehow warms. Deep shadows. Green lawns. Roses AND mums. It doesn't get any better.
Read MoreFrancesca filled them with chocolate this year. Not all of them. Just some.
They were small and round and hidden at the bottom of a plate, underneath the thin strips of sugary fried cookies that she makes and brings to my house every fall. Francesca bakes her special cookies and Liz makes her special salad and I order pizza and everyone brings wine. It's a tradition, a small party we had for the first time eight years ago when our children went off to college.
Read MoreFrancesca filled them with chocolate this year. Not all of them. Just some.
They were small and round and hidden at the bottom of a plate, underneath the thin strips of sugary fried cookies that she makes and brings to my house every fall. Francesca bakes her special cookies and Liz makes her special salad and I order pizza and everyone brings wine. It's a tradition, a small party we had for the first time eight years ago when our children went off to college…
Read MoreI never understood. All the times Maureen told me she couldn't do this and she couldn't do that, I gave her a hard time. "What do you mean you're cooking a meal for your mother's anniversary Mass." Or her brother's. Or some other deceased relative or friend…
Read MoreIt wasn’t a metaphor at first. It was just a ball of yarn. I took a picture of it, though. A close-up. I set it on my daughter’s pull out couch and clicked away intending to keep it as a reminder that perseverance pays off…
Read MoreMy grandmother, Viola, used to work at the Shamrock Cafe in Inman Square in Somerville. It was a barroom and she worked late into the night.
For years, she lived above the cafe, but then she moved down the street. After work, she walked home. My mother begged her to take a cab. My grandmother refused. During the 1960s, the Boston Strangler was killing women her age. We worried that she would be found dead somewhere on Hampshire Street.
Read MoreEvery day it's the same lesson. Over and over we learn and relearn it.
Sometimes it sticks for a while. We'll have an epiphany. We'll understand. But then we forget, and have to begin again. And on it goes, a cycle that goes nowhere, spinning like a top, motion without movement, life without growth…
Read MoreWhen Xena, the cousin I love, was here, before she grew up and met the boyfriend she loves, we would walk from my house all the way downtown, then home again.
She was 11 that summer and couldn't read. And no one had known. She'd buffaloed her teachers and her parents and everyone else. She had listened, observed and pretended to read. It was her fifth-grade teacher who finally realized that she couldn't…
Read MoreHe helped my son move, lugged stuff down from a six-floor walk-up. My husband helped, too, so he met Bill. But I didn't. Bill Hunt was a name, an old college roommate, someone I heard about but didn't know.
Then came Sept. 11…
Read MoreWalt was my best friend’s sister’s husband. Janet brought him home one day when Rose and I were in our teens. And I gawked and Rose giggled because Janet was in love and batting her eyes and smiling sweetly even at us, and talking in the softest voice. And we weren’t used to seeing Janet this…
Read MoreIt took me an hour and 10 minutes to reach her and I wouldn’t have if she hadn’t told me about “American Idol.” She said that she’d hit redial non-stop for two hours before she got to vote for Clay. “You can’t give up, Mom. If you keep dialing you eventually get through.”
I started dialing my daughter on her cell phone Friday afternoon the second I heard…
Read MoreThe stars are a new thing. When he mentioned them the first time I thought they were a figure of speech. “I’m giving you a gold star, today,” my father said.
“Why are you giving me a gold star?” I asked, humoring him.
“Because you called,” he said.
Read MoreIf my family were in the middle of nowhere, we would think we were happy. Plunk us on an island with no one else around and we would think it was Eden recreated. That's how charmed we'd feel. That's how blessed…
Read MoreIn the movies, music announces the big moments. An orchestra swells, there's a shift in keys, a violin wails and you know you'd better pay attention.
Real life doesn't give you a warning. The big moments come and go along with the small ones. We don't edit our lives. And yet somehow they get edited…
Read MoreThe piano sat in the living room for 33 years. A baby grand, it took up a lot of space. It was old, it didn't hold a tune, it needed to be refinished, but I loved it - not just for the notes that filled the house whenever it was played, but for its history. It was my in-laws' piano before it was mine. My sister-in-law played and my father-in-law sang and strummed a ukulele, and friends would come by to visit or to have dinner and inevitably end up around the piano. For years, it made music for parties that seemed to run one right into the next.
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