She was silent as I was putting on makeup, standing on a stool, all 2 1/2 feet of her stretching and straining to see my every move.
My granddaughter Charlotte is newly three and is never silent, not even when she sleeps. But last Friday morning she stood in my bedroom miraculously mute and mesmerized. Moisturizer, foundation, blush, mascara, and lipstick. They had cast a spell.
Read MoreI used to think, when I was young and a new mother, that some day when I was older, Mother's Day would be all about me. I'd be feted and honored and celebrated. And I'd revel in it, like Queen for a Day.
Oh I got cards that first year, from my husband and from my infant son, which my husband signed with X's and O's. And from my mother and my mother-in-law, ``Congratulations on your first Mother's Day!'' And there were gifts, too. But I felt like an imposter.
Read MoreI saved every card. They're in a box under the bed that used to be my daughter Lauren's. I saved even the ones created when my children were so little that they couldn’t yet print and someone — a Sunday School teacher, their grandmother — traced their tiny hand onto a piece of construction paper, then colored…
Read MoreHe was cool about it. The word "recital" simply didn’t phase my 6-year-old grandson. This is how he saw it: People would come and listen to him play the piano and after it was over, he'd bow and they'd clap. Then on the way home, he and his dad would stop and get an ice cream…
Read MoreIn the end, after a few hours, a few months, I dismiss these things. Chalk them up, as Ebenezer Scrooge did, to ``an undigested piece of beef.'' The butterfly that shadowed me the day after my father died. The bird that found a crack in a window and flew into my house after my mother died. Messengers, at first. But in time, simply a butterfly, simply a bird.
Read MoreI had an idea a while ago about writing a book called ``Everything I Know I Learned from My Garden,'' full of pithy if not original insights. Growth can't be rushed, for one, or maturity counts, and it really does matter where you're planted. I scribbled some notes, but got predictably sidetracked. Then winter came and my garden died. (I know: It's not really dead. Which is another life lesson: Things are not always what they seem.) Still, I abandoned the project…
Read More2009, I hardly knew ye. You came and went. You blew in on the heels of Christmas last year and now you are making your exit. A whole year — 365 days. Where did you go?
I see on my calendar, first days, then months crossed off. I lived these days, months…
Read MoreMy first Christmas card arrived a few days ago. It was still November and there it was, a photo card, no less, perfectly lighted and cropped and addressed and mailed!
I studied it while eating Thanksgiving leftovers. How is it possible that people are this organized?
Last year at Thanksgiving, all my grandchildren were in one place - my house for the long weekend - and I dressed them in brand new, (which means, as yet unstained) matching Christmas pajamas. Then I rounded them up, begged them to sit still, look at the camera and smile.
Read MoreUncle Shorty was born in a hotel elevator in Washington, D.C., in January 1974. I had two children then, one five and one three, who had just spent 10 long hours in their car seats, reluctant passengers on a tedious ride from Boston to our nation's capital…
Read MoreA beloved Golden Book inspires a sweet family tradition.
"Can you read me the Granny Glittens story, Mimi?" Adam asked, though he is nearly seven now and likes to read to himself. "I like chapter books," he told me the last time he slept over. Mercy Watson was his choice then….
Read MoreThey're intrepid little flowers, dancing in the snow, lovely things - these orange and yellow marigolds that I have disparaged my whole life. They are the last to leave the party, a sudden standout because they stand alone.
The violet charm clematis that grew tall and leggy behind them; the blood red dahlias that dazzled beside them; the pinks and the plums and the purples that swayed and sashayed their way through June, July, and August, outshining them every day - did not outlast them. They have all vanished now like Cinderella's coach and gown. The clock struck, and they withered…
Read MoreI was such a goofy kid that I actually believed that when you grew up, life turned into a musical. I was raised on musicals - Judy Garland, Doris Day, and Gene Kelly singing and dancing on the small TV in our living room, ``The King and I,'' ``Annie Get Your Gun,'' ``South Pacific'' - blaring from a record player when the TV wasn't on.
Music filled our little house. My mother sang. I sang. My father tried to sing.
I thought everyone sang.
Read MoreI was sure the bat would send them over the edge. It is hairy and huge and horrifying. It has giant white fangs, an eight-foot wing span and menacing "I’m-gonna-get-you-then-devour-you-alive" flashing red eyes.
I hung it in the archway between…
Read MoreHere's what happens when your kids grow up: You don't have Pop-Tarts in your house anymore, or drawings all over your refrigerator, or a box full of unmatched mittens on the closet floor. Plus, you miss things. You can read the newspaper every day, but all the news that's fit to print isn't all the news…
Read MoreMy granddaughter Lucy is 6 years old and is part of a class of people that is quietly being eliminated in my country. She has Down syndrome, a genetic condition that frightens so many women that 92 percent of those who learn they are carrying babies with it choose to abort.
Dr. Brian Skotko, a genetics fellow at Children's Hospital, fears this number will rise. Prenatal tests are invasive, carry a risk to the fetus, and are given in the second trimester, so many women choose not to have them. But a simple new and non-invasive blood test, to be given early in a woman's pregnancy, is coming, perhaps as early as next year.
Read MoreThey had a normal, typical life. First his. Then hers. Then theirs together. They dated. They fell in love. They got married. Five years later they had a nine-pound baby boy. Twelve months and 11 days after Mark was born, Chuck and Maureen Palermo welcomed their second child, another nine-pound boy. They named him Daniel…
Read MoreChicago in 1830 was a military post and fur station where wolves prowled the streets at night and only 12 families lived. Just 30 years later, it had grown to a city of 100,000 and hosted the Republican National Convention.
I learned this the other day while listening to a book on tape, ``Team of Rivals'' by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is really all about Abraham Lincoln, but became for me just one more affirmation that change is not endemic to now. Cities grow. Businesses fail. The sand we build our lives on is always shifting. That's life. Nothing stays the same and the world in which we grow up, the world we know, is never the world in which we grow old.
Read MoreWe were on vacation at Rock Harbor waiting for the sun to set - my grown children and their young children, all of us way out on a jetty, the sky pink, the night clear, the bugs, for the moment, somewhere else.
A steel band was playing, calypso music; not Old Cape Cod, but it was nice, festive.
The little kids didn't stay still for long, though.
Read MoreWhen my older daughter became a mother nearly six years ago, I became a grandmother with a brand-new baby to love. But I also became a different kind of mother to my baby. I was useful again. I knew things. I understood. And the most important thing I understood was how much my daughter loved her child…
Read MoreThe chair has been in the family for 65 years. My husband's parents, both born in Great Britain, bought it for their daughter when she was 2 years old. It is child-size but it shrieks "adult," not only because it has a high back, spindly wooden legs, and curved wooden arms, but also because it is covered in green velvet…
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
