October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. It is also Disability Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Bullying Prevention Month, AIDS Awareness Month, and Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
And the list continues. Every month is full of awareness events.
I'm aware that all these events cause traffic jams. When I'm stuck on Storrow Drive or at the end of my busy street, I sometimes think, "What now?"
Read More'It's one of those days you talk about when they are babies. . . . "She will be in 1st grade when he is in 4th.' "
This is what my daughter Julie wrote on her Facebook page last week under the pictures of her children, Adam and Charlotte, posing in their front yard on the first day of school.
Facebook was full of pictures of big and little kids shyly grinning and of moms and dads writing "Look who's excited to start her first day of school!" and "Yes, that is a tie!" and "Where does it go? Feeling old!"
Read MoreI always wanted a sister or a brother or both or somebody.
I never liked being an only child.
My mother used to tell me that I was enough. But I knew I wasn't. Her sister had six kids. She had just me. She wanted babies and I wanted siblings. There were times we both thought we would get our dream. But it didn't happen.
Read MoreIt was the middle of the heat wave and we were inside sitting on the floor, Lucy using my iPad, looking at Disney characters on YouTube. "Not that. Not that. Not that. This one, Mimi!"
Then she clicked and Mulan sang.
"Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?"
Read MoreIt was the middle of the heat wave and we were inside sitting on the floor, Lucy using my iPad, looking at Disney characters on YouTube. "Not that. Not that. Not that. This one, Mimi!"
Then she clicked and Mulan sang.
"Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?"
Read MoreKids have no lists. No calendars. No scraps of paper with scribbled reminders to pay bills, get dental floss. No baby sitters to call. No appointments to keep. No shopping to do, no places to go and things to buy. Spreadsheets? Quicken? "Where's the coupon for Jiffy Lube?" and "Has anyone seen the laundry receipt?" "Thank you for contacting me, but I'm away on vacation and will not be checking my e-mail. If you need immediate assistance, please contact. . . All these things are in the future.
Childhood is a paper boat borne along by a lazy breeze on a summer day.
Read MoreCaryn and I raised our kids together. We were kids together, but we didn't know it then. We thought we were grown-ups, 19 and 20, both of us in love, engaged, both of us planning our weddings. She was my husband's friend first. He knew her from Trinity Episcopal Church, where both their families were active members, in the choir, on committees. We met for the first time at her parents' house. It was Christmas Eve. She introduced me…
Read MoreThere is no "ex" in father. Once a father, always a father.
My father used to say this to me, though not in these words. He used to say, because I was his only child, his "one and only" (these are his words), that he was the only one in the "whole world" (more of his words) who could call me "daughter." And I was the only one in the whole world who could call him "father."
Read MoreThey weren't fishbowls, though that's how I remember them; two, clear glass tubs full of white paper strips that held my youngest daughter's dreams. She was 16 and we were in New York City for six weeks, subletting an apartment because she'd been admitted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a summer program, and I wouldn't let her go alone…
Read MoreAll I want is to be outside. I want to cut the grass and prune the bushes and dig up the ugly ground cover I planted last year that is brown and straggly and taking over the world. I want to rake up the dead leaves and chop down dead bushes and cut back the hydrangeas and plant coreopses and turn on the hose and revel in this most welcome late-blooming, finally burgeoning, amazingly gorgeous spring. A half-hour. One hour at the most. Then I'll come in and do all I have to do. I'll rake just one flower bed. I'll pull just a few weeds. I'll be finished by nine. It won't even make a dent in my day.
Read MoreMy husband says I would know if I swallowed an ant. I'm not so sure. Right up until the ant, it had been a perfect day. Sunshine. Warmth. I got to play in my garden for the first time in so long that I had forgotten how the earth smells in spring: new like the top of an infant's head; fresh, like my dog Molly's breath when we first met her, when she was just 6 weeks old…
Read MoreAmazing things have happened in the 2,000 years since Jesus Christ lived. But none compares with what Christianity celebrates today.
Eternal life. That's what Easter is about. Not fancy hats or frilly dresses or Cadbury eggs or lilies or bunnies or patent leather shoes or Easter egg hunts or even family get-togethers.
Easter is about all that cannot be seen.
Read MoreA few days ago, six of us were eating and talking about Rob Portman, the US senator from Ohio who had just announced that after a lifetime of opposing gay marriage, he had changed his mind.
His son had come out, and he had given gay marriage more thought, and I was dissing him for this, not for his change of opinion but for seeing the light only because his son, not someone else's, was gay.
And that's when my friend and teacher John O'Neil made me see the light. "It takes a face to change a heart," he said quietly.
Read MoreI had a moment last week. It was my youngest child's 36th birthday not a benchmark, I know. Not 16 or 21 or 30 or 40. But startling nonetheless. All the numbers are: Friends' ages. Years married. Years out of high school. The year 2013.
If the devil himself had appeared at my door in those few minutes when I was trying to figure out exactly how my baby got to be 36, I would have…
Read MoreThe pictures are ordinary. There's Lucy in front of Cinderella's castle. There's Lucy on the Dumbo ride. There's Lucy standing next to Prince Charming.
These are shots that everyone takes. "Stop. Look at me. Say 'cheese!' "
Read MoreEvery Wednesday night, at 11 o'clock, sometimes a little after, in a little room in a little club on Columbus Avenue in Boston, pianist Michael Kreutz plays his closing number, "What I Did for Love," a song from the hit musical "A Chorus Line."
Wednesday is show-tune night at the Napoleon Room at Club Cafe, and for three hours Kreutz sings and plays and other people get up and sing, so many faces and voices familiar, but always some new ones, too, every week different.
Read MoreEvery Wednesday night, at 11 o'clock, sometimes a little after, in a little room in a little club on Columbus Avenue in Boston, pianist Michael Kreutz plays his closing number, "What I Did for Love," a song from the hit musical "A Chorus Line." Wednesday is show-tune night at the Napoleon Room at Club Cafe, and for three hours…
Read MoreThere are no words. Yet there are only words. Tragic. Inexplicable. Carnage. Babies. Heroes.
We use words to make sense of the senseless. Charlotte Helen Bacon, 6, wanted to be a veterinarian. Daniel Gerard Barden, 7, was always smiling…
Read MoreMy husband jokes, "The cows know the songs by now." He's referring to a scene in the movie "City Slickers" in which Billy Crystal is trying to explain the basics of VCR recording to a friend who isn't catching on. The two of them are on horseback, driving cattle, trotting along, and a rider behind them, who has been listening, shouts: "He doesn't get it! He'll never get it. It's been four hours! The cows can tape something by now." And so it is with me and singing…
Read MoreThe manger was my mother's. But I hadn't thought about its history for a long, long time, because the figurines Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus and the wise men and the sheep and the cow and the horse and the angels are mine, bought over decades, all porcelain, all white, the small, wooden manger the sole thing that was hers. It's in the background of a picture I keep on my desk all year long…
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