Americans are reading less. Never mind Oprah and her book club. Never mind that you can never get a parking space at Barnes & Noble in Braintree, and that there's always a line at the checkout. According to a new survey, ``Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group.''
The worst statistic? Only slightly more than half of us read even one book in all of 2002.
Read MoreThe Fisher Price Music Box/Record Player belonged to my first born. He’s 34 now. You go on eBay and this thing is called “vintage”.
It looks vintage. It's red, white and bright yellow plastic and has decals of birds and a banjo for decoration. But back when it was new and my son sat hunched over it, when he was a toddler, not even two and mesmerized by notes he could…
Read MoreI didn't know him, had never even heard of him until I read about his death in Monday's paper. ``Francis A. Carlson, at 30, of Franklin, ALS activist.''
ALS is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's disease. Of all the diseases you don't want to get, this ought to top the list. It paralyzes the body but leaves the mind intact. People think it's rare, that it strikes only older people. But in the United States alone, 30,000 people have it, 15 people a day die from it and 15 more are, every day, diagnosed with it.
Read MoreHe says it's over. Finished. Kaput. Never again. He says he's wasted enough of his time, energy and mind rearranging his life for them, thinking about them, cheering them on and defending them.
He says not any more. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not on your life.
He says this, of course, on a Friday morning, when the Red Sox are sleeping or working out or reading self-help books - doing whatever it is they do when they're not bobbling balls, leaving the bases loaded and breaking their fans' hearts.
Read MoreThe rabbit was easy to identify. I saw it a few weeks ago as I pulled into the driveway. It sat on the lawn with its long ears, brownish fur, cute tail, and I've seen it every day since, hop, hop hopping around.
It's definitely a rabbit. No doubt.
Birds are easy to name, too. We have blackbirds, cardinals, sparrows, a pair of blue jays.
They flutter. They tweet. They soar. They're all definitely birds.
Read MoreNo one I know goes to the movies anymore. My father says he can't sit that long. My daughter says she can't deal with the crowds. My friends say they haven't the time. My neighbors say they can't remember the last movie they saw. Even the guy who came to inject pellets into one of my trees last week said it has been years since he's been to a movie.
I tell them they need to see ``Fahrenheit 9/11.''
Read More``You're not doing the job you did when I first married you,'' my husband chides, turning to me with a grin and dangling from his hand a thick tangle of unmatched socks, which he has pulled out of his drawer. They are different textures, different patterns and different lengths. But they are all black. Why are all of his socks black?
On the floor, next to him, in a laundry basket, under a stack of towels, are his golf shirts, five of them, not ironed. Around him, there is more disarray.
Read MoreIt hurts her parents. It hurts me. And it will hurt her someday.
The way our society deals with differences. The way her being, her existence, is a thing that scientists and doctors are working to prevent. My granddaughter, Lucy, has Down syndrome. This isn't a tragedy. But the world in which we live acts as if it is.
Read MoreThe mother is calm because she needs her daughter to be. The mother is the leader. She can lead her daughter back to the night that changed their lives, or she can take her hand and walk her toward tomorrow.
She chooses tomorrow.
After the hearing, when the boys who sexually assaulted her then 15-year-old finally admitted what they had done, the mother went to a store and bought her daughter a small box and said, ``Put all your bad memories in here. It was one night of your life. It's not your whole life. You have a choice. To let it ruin you or to let it go.''
Read MoreShe never laid out a suit for him. He didn't wear suits. He wore a navy blue police uniform - wool pants, wool jacket, long sleeves even in the summer. And my father pressed his uniform himself.
He ironed in the dining room, probably because we hardly ever used that room. I would sit on a chair, my back to the window, and watch as he placed a wet handkerchief up and down each pant leg and meticulously steamed in a crease.
``You don't ever put an iron directly on wool or you'll end up with shiny pants,'' he told me.
Read MoreIt's one year later. One year after the ground caved in and the world blew apart and the center failed to hold. One year after we were told, ``I'm sorry'' so many times that we were sorry, too.Three hundred and sixty-five days, some of them terrible. The day my granddaughter Lucy Rose was diagnosed with Down syndrome. The cold, rainy day she came home. The day the doctor said she needed heart surgery. The day of the surgery when the operation didn't go as planned. The days after, at the hospital, when we felt helpless at her side.
Read MoreMy Aunt Lorraine, who was named after a comb (Lorraine was a brand), marched into my hospital room a few days after my son was born and gave me what I've come to refer to as THE SPEECH. She said, arms folded, that every man, no matter what he says, wants to have a son named after him. She was 12 years older than I and had had a son a year before whom she'd named Frank…
Read MoreIt occurred to me as I was sitting in the Great Hall in Codman Square, Dorchester Thursday morning, a guest at a breakfast celebrating this treasure's 100th anniversary, that a building really is more than brick and wood and everything it takes to hold it together. And it's not just sentiment that draws us back to a place.
Sure, we come back to places to say, ``This is the house where I grew up.'' Or ``This is my old school.'' Or ``This was my library.'' But usually we come back because there's something of ourselves, and others, that was left behind.
Read More``I can't believe it,'' my dentist said. I was in the chair. He was standing over me. He looked stunned. He looked like a man who had just had his car stolen.
No it wasn't the sight of my migrating teeth (his phrase, not mine) that stunned him, but the sight of my daughter and her infant son.
Read MoreBefore Ronald Reagan died we were talking about wakes and funerals. Before we heard the news on the radio, before the tributes and the retrospectives and the state funeral. Before his biggest event ever, my youngest daughter and I were sitting at the kitchen table discussing how sad it is that the ultimate celebration of a human life doesn't come until after a person is dead.
The dead can't smell the flowers people send. The dead can't enjoy the feel of a new suit. The dead can't smile at family stories or laugh at old jokes or look at someone he's known his whole life and put his hand on his shoulder and say, ``I never knew you felt that way.''
Read MoreHe was a picture on a wall at my Great-aunt Mary's house, a son who went to war and never came home. Aunt Mary was sad all the time. Uncle Pete was strange. My grandmother said this son was their only child. I was an only child. I knew how sad my mother would be without me…
Read MoreThe thing about a thank-you note, says my friend Anne, who is the Dalai Lama of thank-you notes, who returns home after a quiet day with a friend and writes, ``I had the BEST time! Let's not wait so long to do this again,'' is that it has to be written immediately, while the moment is fresh. No putting off until tomorrow what should be done today. A thank-you note, like a popover, is best served fresh.
Not long ago, I sent Anne flowers to thank her for something - my thank you, of course, as stale as bread crumbs. ``Thank you for watching my children, when was it? In the spring of '84?'' And the next day, what did I get in the mail? Two pictures of the flowers - front view, back view - tucked in a note that said, ``I LOVE them!! Thank you.''
Read MoreWe have friends who live on the coast of Maine. They used to own an inn, and for years they invited us there every Memorial Day weekend. And we went. And we made memories. Now they own a house. My youngest daughter was married there two summers ago. That was the last time I was in Maine. Life gets in the way of living. Too much to do. So little time. Somebody can't get away for a week or a weekend, so no one gets away.
Read MoreShe hasn't called me Mimi yet, but she's close. I can tell. I say, MiMiMiMi - I sing-song it, actually, and she furrows her little forehead and studies my pursed lips with Alexander Fleming-like concentration (Hmm. What's that in my petri dish?) And I know, I am positive, that she is silently practicing the words she soon will speak aloud: Mimi. My Mimi.
Read MoreThe TV is on and the 6 o'clock news is all bad. Someone was stabbed. Someone was shot. Someone brought a gun to school. Someone left a 2-year-old on a bus. More U.S. soldiers have been killed and terrorists are everywhere. ``It's a horrible world,'' I tell my daughter. ``Not in this room,'' she says, her 10-month-old sitting on her lap clapping her hands and smiling.
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