I have it upstairs in a box somewhere, a piece of pink, lined paper filled with writing that's straight up and down. The penmanship struck me as exotic when I first saw it because it wasn't the Palmer Method. It was a combination of printing and art, the f's and g's and p's and q's big and bold and gaudy. The words the letters made were bold, too, because they held up a mirror to my life. This is who you are, the lady who penned them said.
Read MoreEverything about the child is beautiful. She has beautiful hair, beautiful eyes (made even more beautiful by silver glitter she wears on the day we meet), a beautiful smile, and a beautiful soul. You can see a child's soul when they're new. "Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into the here." So says the poem. But as they age? Souls often hide.
Read MoreMy husband said I should put the bird out of its misery. "It will never fly again. Why are you doing this?" The sparrow, small and frail and biblical, got its neck stuck in the crook of a wrought-iron arm that holds a bird feeder, which I bought last week in a small store in New Hampshire. The feeder, the holder, the bag of special seed were purchased from an old New Englander who's been selling bird food and feeders his whole life. My other feeders are markdowns and seconds. But this was the real thing, "Droll Yankees The World's Best Bird Feeders," a Lexus in my world of Fords. Even the seed was a special blend.
Read MoreIt is not the prettiest tree. A big, gangly oak, it blooms late and it blooms slow and every spring it leaves a thick layer of pale green pollen all over the driveway and the cars and the newly washed windows. And I have thought, many times, I wish we had a maple in the front yard instead.
Read MoreThe nose is missing. My father says it has to be in the glove compartment of my car because that's where I told him I'd put it. He said I called specifically to say that the nose was in a baggie ``in my glove compartment, Dad'' so that I'd have it with me the next time I visited.
Read MoreYou wouldn't want people, even people you love, phoning you every morning, then, heaven help us, singing their hello. A ringing phone plus a chirpy person before a second cup of coffee is definitely not a good thing.
Except when it's your birthday. Then you want the phone to ring. Then you're eager for everyone you know to do his-her rendition of "Happy Birthday to You," never mind how early it is because even though you're not a kid anymore, on your birthday you still are and you want the song and the celebration, the cake and the candles and everything - balloons, lunch, "It's your birthday, wow!" in between.
Read MoreI was thinking Sunday, as I was reading the papers, giving most of my attention to the pile of flashy, color flyers packed with things to buy, things to give, things that promise to make an old-fashioned Christmas - so much more pleasant than the news - that this is what happened to the Jews in Germany. They didn't pay attention, either. They sat among their families, buffered by them, and pushed away the world, deluded into thinking that what was happening outside their doors could never happen to them.
They were preoccupied, as we are, with life, with celebrations, with birthdays, graduations, and holidays. Our personal lives brim with these small, good, wonderful things.
Read MoreABOARD AMTRAK'S ACELA - It's the new train. Well, not really the new train but not the old train, either. Because this new and improved new-old train promises to get me to New York's Penn Station in three hours and 40 minutes, the speed of sound compared to past trips.
Read MoreI thought THE LOOK had gone the way of penny candy and flavor straws. "What look?" I expected people to say when I asked about it. But instead there was all this nodding and smiling and instant recognition. "Oh, I know THE LOOK" and "No one could give THE LOOK like my mother." And "You know what? My mother still gives me THE LOOK."
Read MoreGod forbid that Conolrad alert is ever for real. Barely a dusting of snow, and civilization as we know it caved Thursday morning. The ground was hardly wet when traffic skidded to a stop. I think we've all gone soft. I counted four abandoned cars on a four-mile stretch of Interstate 95 before 9 a.m. You could see the white lines on the road, there was that little snow. And you could see for a mile. This was not a whiteout. This was snow, pretty white crystals falling from the sky, not fallout from a nuclear bomb.
Read MoreThe backpacks look alike. This is my sole defense. But I don't mention this as we drive silently along. The Berlin Wall was just a picket fence compared to the wall between us. When in trouble, remain mum, that's the rule. I learned this from the leader of the free world, President Clinton, who is an expert on at least one virtue. But silence is difficult for me. What I'd like to do is talk - argue, plead, say to the man who promised to love me for better or worse (and this is definitely worse) that I made a simple, run-of-the-mill, everyday, garden-variety mistake.
Read MoreMid-winter. Halfway between here and there. Waiting for the snow to fall. Waiting for the snow to disappear. These are strange days. You find things in your refrigerator, cranberry sauce, a few pieces of ham, left over from Christmas. The poinsettias remain in bloom. Christmas wreaths still bedeck more than a few doors. In corners, and under the carpet, stray pine needles hide.
They're props from a play that closed weeks ago. It was a good play, but that was then and this is now. Now it's time to get serious, time for resolutions, for getting focused. Last year is over. A new year has begun.
Read MoreIt's a curious custom, taking things you don't want and no longer need, dragging them to the front lawn, marking them with a price tag, then selling them.
But that's what we do. A dime for a Johnny Tilliston record. It's not high finance. It's trading.
At the end of the day, all you have is a pocketful of change, but it's like when you were a kid and shook coins out of a piggy bank. It's found money. And it's fun.
Read MoreIt wasn't a real vacation, not the kind you write home about. "Dear Family, Today we saw the Eiffel Tower and toured the Louvre and tomorrow we're headed for Versailles. Gotta hurry and get this in the mail because we're off to dinner." No, it wasn't like this at all.
Read MoreIt takes awhile for me to notice things.
The billboards have been gone for months, but I didn't start missing them until this week.
I looked for them on Route 128, then on the Mass Pike and was suprised when I didn't find any.
Read More'Smile at each other - it doesn't matter who it is - and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.' - Mother Teresa
She is the antithesis of everything we worship in this country. She is old and we revere young. She is wrinkled and stooped, and we admire smooth and tall. She is humble and we're used to boastful. She is poor and we idolize wealth.
She is a bent, old woman who drapes cloth on her body only to cover herself, who doesn't dye her hair or work out or wear makeup or jewelry or spend even an ounce of energy worrying about what she looks like.
Read MoreEvery afternoon she races in from school, raids the refrigerator, then heads for the piano.
"So how was your day?" I shout over Jimmy crack corn and I don't care.
"Fine," she answers, distracted, immediately lost in the notes of a song she has been drumming on her desk and rehearsing in her head throughout the day.
Read MoreHe didn't exactly swagger into the house. He walked the way he always does. Only he walked with confidence.
He didn't hunch through a doorway. He didn't slouch in a chair. He sat like a capital "L" perfectly straight, not crossing and uncrossing his arms, not shuffling his feet, not looking like a corralled horse eager to bolt.
Read MoreI have never seen him, the child who lives upstairs. I heard him for the first time the morning after we moved in. Elephant hooves awakened me at 6:45 a.m. I anticipated that the beast overhead would crash through the ceiling and fall in my lap. But apartment floors are apparently constructed of sturdy wood. Good thing. It is only a floor that separates us from him.
Read MoreThe 16-year-old says I stole her idea. She has been keeping what she calls a "common place book," for half a year now, since her English teacher, Mr. Schauble, introduced the concept to her class.
It's really a very UNcommon book, a journal augmented by other things, more like a scrapbook than a diary.
Read More
ABOUT COLUMNS ARCHIVES WHAT’S ON MY MIND GALLERY IT’S NEVER TOO LATE BOOKS CONTACT
Copyright © 2020 Beverly Beckham
Web Design by: SKILLARA | Marketing + Media
