My grandson, Adam, was talking about turning 5. He was planning his birthday party, naming the friends he was going to invite, telling me that The Backyardigans is the theme he’d chosen this year. "And we’re going to have pretzels and cake and an obstacle course," he said…
Read MoreWaiting. For the phone to ring. For my son on the end of the line. For his voice in my ear. For the words, "It's time, Mom. The baby is coming."
Waiting. For two weeks that's what we’ve been doing. The first baby came two weeks early. The second we believed — mother, father, grandparents, sisters…
Read Moreou know what I love about my letter carrier? You know what I love about all letter carriers?
They show up. Every day, except Sundays and holidays.
Rain or shine, sleet or snow. Election Day. Groundhog Day. The first day of spring? Even one Christmas day, a few years ago. The doorbell rang and there was my letter carrier with a package marked "special delivery."
Read MoreThis is what "internationally renowned" Sherman J. Silber, M.D., writes in his "completely revised and updated" book "How to Get Pregnant," published by Little Brown and Co. last August: "The biggest fear of most pregnant women is that their child will be abnormal, and the most common abnormality they worry about is Down syndrome. ... These children are severely retarded mentally, and they usually die before their thirtieth birthday." He also writes: "We can prevent couples from having to face the horror of giving birth to children with otherwise devastating genetic defects such as Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, mental retardation, etc., that terrify every woman who ever gets pregnant."
Read MoreFive hours in a car. It's a long time for a 5-year-old to be confined. But Lucy never complained. Not a tear. Not a tantrum. Not even a pout.
My granddaughter was happy, listening to Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," (sung by Julie Andrews; the child has good taste) and singing along. She ate chicken fingers in a nice restaurant overlooking the water, then she was back in her car seat, singing again.
Read MoreJudith Melisi has been on a mission for more than a year now. But last June it became personal.
For months the Halifax mother had been trying to alert the owners of the health club where she works out to the dangers she saw in the child-care room. Candy that little ones could choke on brought in by older kids. Hot coffee brought in by a worker. The bathroom door left open. An electric outlet exposed.
Read MoreWhen I was looking for a dog a few years ago, I came across the Metro South Adoption Center, the satellite shelter for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
A friend suggested the place, which is located on a rural street in Brockton. I took my grandson, Adam. He was 2 at the time.
I expected a few dogs and cats, not rooms full of animals waiting to be adopted. But there they were, a Disney-esque lineup: rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, birds, mice, dogs, cats, even a rat.
Read MoreIt's entertainment. Fluff, not to be taken seriously. And yet, as I watch "American Idol," the contestants all teary because Simon or Paula laugh at their performance or bluntly tell them they can't sing, I find myself thinking about my father at 18.
Read MoreHe was a priest in his fifties and she was a child in my arms, and he embraced her from the first time he met her. Father David Ziomek loved Lucy from the get-go.
He called her "my friend Lucy" and looked deep into her eyes. And, always, always, she smiled into his.
Read MoreA few months ago, my daughter Julie was worried about her daughter, Charlotte, who, though almost 2, wasn't talking.
"Charlotte points and says 'unk.' It's the only thing she says. She calls everything 'unk,'” she told her pediatrician. He nodded his head…
Read MoreThere is not a single photograph, not a frame of film, not even an artist's rendering, of the biggest presence at last Tuesday's historic inauguration.
No mention in the daily papers the next day. No quips. No cartoons. No newscasters' analytic buzz.
The world watched, the world saw. And yet no one said.
Read MoreChildren make the world go away. It's that simple.
The barrage of bad news on radio and TV, in newspapers and books, the endless deceit and fraud and abuses and lies, public and private, all the wars and broken hearts and broken bodies and broken dreams.
World without mend, amen.
Children displace these things. Not forever, but for a while.
Read MoreI am sitting at my computer eating reduced-fat potato chips, using them to scoop up tuna fish once packed in water but now swimming in low-fat mayonnaise. And I am feeling smug and Spartan because there is no bread in my lunch, no yummy roll grilled in butter, no slice of white American cheese melted on top. There's 1 percent milk in my coffee and just a single cookie on my plate: my neighbor Katherine's homemade - without butter - almond biscotti. Ah, healthful eating.
Read MoreAmid a barrage of bad news in the world, grandchildren make everything good again
Grandchildren make the world go away. It’s that simple.
The barrage of bad news on radio and TV, in newspapers and books, the endless deceit and fraud and abuses and lies, public and private, all the wars and broken hearts and broken bodies and broken dreams…
Read MoreI’ve heard the names my whole life: Grandma, Grampy, Mimi, Bube, Grandpa, Papa, Nonna. Nonny, Nana. Grandfather, Grandmother.
But I never knew these names were magic until one was said to me.
It was Nana that I called my grandmothers, Big Nana and Little Nana, because that’s what they were, not just in size, Big Nana as wide as she was tall and Little Nana petite and delicate…
Read MoreA young mother walks into a restaurant with four children - a girl and three boys. The oldest, a boy, is maybe 11; the youngest, also a boy, is about 4. It's a little after 8 a.m. and already in the upper 40s, unusual for a December morning in New Hampshire. Yet the kids are dressed in bulky jackets, hats, mittens, boots, scarves. They are quiet children…
Read MoreI should have called her when I heard she was sick.
But I didn't. The telephone wasn't part of our friendship, unless we were in each other's neighborhood. Then we'd dial up and say, "I'm here." And drop what we were doing and get together.
Read MoreMy friend Rosemary is moving, packing up and downsizing. It's the American way. You scrimp and save to buy a house, spend a lifetime scraping and scrubbing, replacing and renovating, decorating and landscaping - and then you sell it. I wanted to say goodbye to Rosemary's big old house, stand in the foyer one last time, and breathe in the smells of old wood and new books and whatever was brewing in the kitchen. So I called and asked, "Can I come over?" But Rose said, "No. Richard and I are still packing."
Read MoreI am putting the garden to bed. Raking leaves. Cutting back shrubs. Pulling out yellow loosestrife. Trimming. Thinning. Transplanting. Digging up dahlias and drying them off and storing them in the cellar in paper bags. Emptying ceramic pots and lugging them to the cellar, too, so they don't crack in the cold. I am puttering and pruning and planting. Katherine, my friend across the street, finished all these things weeks ago. She has already planted red and yellow tulips for next spring. She has already fertilized her grass. She has even grown new grass…
Read MoreI would have more in common with her now. I would sit at her kitchen table and drink my tea and eat the Pepperidge Farm Oatmeal-Raisin cookies she always bought for me and not have one eye on the clock and one foot out the door. I would listen to her stories and take her advice and not be so quick to say, "But things are different…
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