It’s something I think of every Christmas and I don’t know why. I am sitting on the couch in my in-laws’ living room. I don’t remember the couch, though I should. I sat on it dozens of times. I am sitting on the end, in the corner, close to the dining room. My sister-in-law, Janet, is sitting on a chair to the left of me.
Read MoreIt started with Adam, who is 14 now. He was 4 then. He said “goed” instead of “went.” “I goed to the Walka Walka Mall,” he’d announce every time we took him to the Walka Walka Mall. (The Walpole Mall, where he walked and walked — “walka walka” — his favorite place.) Now it’s the favorite place of my youngest grandchildren.
Read MoreI don’t know if, when you’re in second grade, you can actually want to be someone else, erase who you are and become that other. Maybe what’s truer is that you want to stay who you are, but embellish yourself somehow, like store-wrapped chicken pounded and garnished, chicken still, but fancy now, dressed up as chicken piccata. Rosemary Jablonski was my chicken piccata…
Read MoreWhat I want to believe is that people are good, that when push comes to shove, even strangers have your back. Because, really, they do. How many times has each of us been helped by someone else?
“Have a seat.” “What can I get you?” A hug. A ride…
Read MoreThere is no cure for Rett syndrome. Nor is there an A, followed by B, followed by C, predictable, sequential decline. The genetic neurodevelopmental disorder is unpredictable and fierce. Bella Rutko is one of its victims. She’s 9 years old…
Read MoreI meant it this time. I told my husband, my kids, my grandkids, I told everyone I’m done with decorating for every occasion. When I’m dead and God says to me, “What did you do with your time on Earth?,” I do not want to have to answer that I spent my limited days on this planet packing and unpacking Easter bunnies and witches…
Read MoreMy grandson, Adam, who is 14, is annihilating me. We are playing "Words with Friends 2." a game similar to Scrabble, only it's faster and more fun because it can be played on a phone, tablet, or a computer, anywhere, any time. Sometimes we play…
Read MoreMy family teases me about how much I love Davis Farmland. I visited for the first time in 2009 and…
Read MoreIt is early afternoon on a weekday and Katherine and I are leaving the Red Wing in Walpole after enjoying a heaping plate full of fried scallops and clams, which the restaurant cooks to perfection. Katherine, who is 90 and blind…
Read MoreThe names are separated on opposite pages in an old Hallmark datebook, the kind that card stores used to give away. The girls are listed on the left…
Read MoreIt’s late on a Sunday night, almost Monday morning, and I am on my iPad googling Glennon Doyle Melton. My daughter Julie told me to read Melton’s book, “Love Warrior, A Memoir” two years ago. Sunday, I finally got around to it. I read it in a day. And at the end of the day, I wanted more…
Read MoreI'm starting with Jenny Wolicki because she is the reason I began to notice all the good and selfless things that young people do…
Read MoreI wasn't there. Only the parents had tickets. Schools aren't big enough to accommodate all the grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends who would like to be present at an eighth-grade graduation. So we get pictures and…
Read More'Tell me, Dad. Please, tell me about you." That's what I would say to my father if I could sit with him at his kitchen table one more time. I spent so many hours…
Read MoreLebensborn. It means "Fountain of Life" or "Spring of Life," and was a Nazi program designed by the Heinrich Himmler, the head of the German Gestapo and SS, to create a master Aryan race. It's a word that I had to look up…
Read MoreYesterday, bright and early, while still on my first cup of coffee, my daughter Julie forwarded me an article about sponges. "You Should Throw Away Your Germy Kitchen Sponge Immediately," I read along with the cheery fact that…
Read MoreIt survived the winter. I don't know how. Everywhere — across the street, down the street, all over town — bigger trees with longer histories and better pedigrees lay uprooted and dead, felled by ice and wind and cold...
Read MoreI swear I am not snooping. My granddaughter Charlotte leaves her essays open on my computer, and when I log on there they are, big as life, right in front of me. How can I not read them? Her essays, FYI, are not a private diary. They are part of…
Read MoreThey aren't even mine. I inherited them. They came with my husband not on the day we were married but not long after, a set of encyclopedias, which had lived in his bedroom when he was growing up. "Take them," his mother must have said.
Read MoreMostly what I want to do is copy her words. It's how I started out, when I was a teenager, copying the words of the best writers, slowly, in cursive, in a small notebook, hoping that…
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