Walking not for a cure, but to shine a light

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Walking not for a cure, but to shine a light

Her name was Judy. She had thick, dark hair, which she pulled into a pony tail, and though I coveted that pony tail (my hair was curly and short) and though we were the same age - 8 or 9 when we met, 12 the last time I saw her - we weren't ever friends.

She had braces on her legs, big metal ones, and her gait was slow and labored, and I wanted to ask her why. What happened? Did you have polio? Because polio was the only illness I knew about.

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In a forgotten photo, a mother's happy face

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In a forgotten photo, a mother's happy face

I had two mothers. That's what I've long thought.

The first was young and spry and pretty and hip. She sang and she danced and she loved old movies and show tunes and big hats and Johnny Carson.

The other mother was head-injured and infirm. A fall made her old. A fall took away all her prettiness. Before she fell, my mother was one person. After she fell, she was another. I knew both, I loved both, so I thought I knew her.

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A Love Stronger Than Witches' Brew

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A Love Stronger Than Witches' Brew

It isn’t perfect. But Adam thinks it is.

My 6-year-old grandson likes the Halloween book we made together so much that he's asked me to come to his school and read it to his first-grade class. "It's awesome, Mimi!" he insists.

The book is called I Love You More Than, and I wrote the words and he chose the pictures and we put them together on kodakgallery.com (because photo books were 25 percent off that day). But…

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She met the Cookie Monster, and found it was she

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I ate the kids' cookies.

My neighbor, Katherine, who lives across the street and bakes all the time, yummy things like cakes layered with raspberries and cakes dripping with chocolate, put two freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in two baggies last Tuesday, then handed them to me because it was nearly 5 p.m. and too close to dinner time for cookies. That's what the children's mothers repeated three times before they left their daughters with me: ``Don't feed them anything, Mimi. Not even if they beg. It will spoil their dinner.''

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A Childhood Wish Come True

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A Childhood Wish Come True

This is what I prayed for, for as long as I can remember, since first grade, all the way through third and fifth and eighth, and even when I was in high school: a brother or a sister. I didn’t care.

Please, God, please, I begged every Sunday in church and every time I made a novena. Please, God, please, I wished on every birthday candle, on every first star and on every dandelion gone to seed.I had faith. I had patience. Plus, I knew all the tricks: The wishbone. The fortune cookie…

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Lingering sting, and a vote for change in attitudes

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I thought I would never forget the time, the place, the season. What I wore. What she wore. The faces of the people I met that day.

But I have forgotten. It's a blur. The only thing I remember is wanting to cry.

I had taken my granddaughter, Lucy, into Boston to a modeling agency. She was 17 months old. My grandson Adam, Lucy's cousin, was barely 7 months. It was his mother's idea.

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Seeing the young person in the old

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Seeing the young person in the old

“Once upon a time, I was a little girl just like you,'' I tell my 3-year-old granddaughter.

And she squinches up her nose and shakes her head and says, ``No, you weren't.''

I show her pictures of me when I was 2 and 5 and 8. I say, ``See. I had hair just like yours.'' I show her my fourth-grade school picture. ``Look. Here I am.'' I call my childhood friend Rosemary and say, ``Rose? Talk to Charlotte. Tell her how old we were when we met.'' And Rose tells her that we were 7 and in second grade.

But Charlotte remains unconvinced.

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No point in wishing life away

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No point in wishing life away

Where did June go? And May? And why does February plod and March stall, while spring and summer fly by? It's July Fourth - the quintessential summer holiday - and I still have winter coats hanging in the front hall closet. I haven't planted any annuals yet. Or weeded my garden. My window boxes are empty. There's not a single flower on my deck. My marigolds are seeds in packages. The lawn furniture remains in the shed. And I haven't even begun to make a summer reading list.

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The big picture? Better to resize it!

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The big picture? Better to resize it!

It's perennial wisdom, the stuff of graduation cards and a top contender on lists of ``best advice.'' You have to look at the big picture. This is what we tell our kids and it's what responsible adults told us. The big picture is the Holy Grail. To be a success, you have to know where you are going and you have to have a plan. ``Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.'' I have always loved this analogy. But the truth is I find the big picture - from the simplest question asked of a child, ``What do you want to be when you grow up?'' to the most complex asked years later, ``What's it's all about, Alfie?'' - overwhelming…

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Dreams and Dollhouses

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My husband bought me the dollhouse when I was eight months pregnant with my youngest child. That was 33 short years ago.

It was January, and between snowstorms, when he packed our two kids in the station wagon and said, "I'll see you tonight." He then drove I don’t know how many miles north of Portland, Maine, to pick up a dollhouse I’d been dazzled by at a craft show a few months..

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Out of the blue, a memory she never knew she had

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Out of the blue, a memory she never knew she had

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.

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Only one mother to cherish

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Only one mother to cherish

I 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.

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The Gifts You Keep - There are Gifts You Treasure Most, Especially as a Mother, and Especially on Mother's Day

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I 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…

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On the brother she never knew

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On the brother she never knew

In 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.

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Songs: They're the key to life

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Songs: They're the key to life

I 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…

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