A ‘plethora’ of ‘delectable’ words, and even more love

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A ‘plethora’ of ‘delectable’ words, and even more love

Amy has called me Mimi since the afternoon we met. She was 5 then and though I wasn’t her Mimi, my grandson Adam, who also was 5, called me Mimi so she did, too. I’m still not Amy’s Mimi. Not officially. But unofficially, in our patchwork quilt of a family, I am. I am Mimi and Amy is my granddaughter because she is the daughter of my daughter’s partner, and until the world comes up with better words for what we mean to each other, we’re stuck using words that don’t quite fit. Which is ironic considering that Amy Hylen is a stickler for words.

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When my Aunt Lorraine was young, beautiful, and all mine

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When my Aunt Lorraine was young, beautiful, and all mine

My cousin Darlene sent the photo in a text message. Our cousin Jan had e-mailed it to her. I had never seen it before. It’s a black and white shot of two girls on a beach, young women you’d call them today, but girl is who each was back then, in the early 1950s. Beautiful girls, both of them. One salt, one pepper, the blonde in a black bathing suit, the raven-haired one in white…

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Why isn’t kindness news?

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Why isn’t kindness news?

Every day it gets a little harder to keep the faith. I’m trying. But I’m failing more than succeeding. I live in two separate worlds. The world around me. The world in which I exist every day. My house. My street. All the places I visit. The people I know. The people I see. The people I text and e-mail and talk to. Old friends. New friends. I don’t see hate or division in my very small world.

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By telling their stories, we remember those we have lost

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By telling their stories, we remember those we have lost

I saved his letters, 301 typewritten pages, all single spaced, all caps. “SHAME ON YOU!” the first began. “YOU MADE ME CRY. I’M EIGHTY YEARS OLD AND YOU MADE ME CRY.” Ray Redican wrote this to me on Dec. 24, 1993. On Dec. 26, when it arrived in my mail, I picked up the phone and called him. This is the way our friendship began and the way it endured. He wrote and I called.

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Memories take us back to movies, popcorn, friendship, and family

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Memories take us back to movies, popcorn, friendship, and family

I am escaping the present. I didn’t mean to leave the here and now. But, really, the here and now is not such a fun place to be. So why stay?

I was on Facebook sipping my morning coffee, scrolling through reposted news stories, reading the comments of people I don’t know (Why do I do this?), getting more and more annoyed, a too typical morning, when up popped a post with a slightly blurred photo of the Randolph Movie Theater, the one that was on North Main Street in the 1950s. And just like that, the present was gone and I was at that old theater, the box office right in front of me, my best friend Rosemary beside me…

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The summer of COVID-19 fed my soul, but it broke my heart

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The summer of COVID-19 fed my soul, but it broke my heart

What I will remember about the summer of COVID-19 are pleasures denied. Hugging. Eating out. Visiting friends. Traveling. Singing. Going to concerts and plays. Sports. Crowds. Trains. Planes. Movies. The laughter of strangers. Lunches and dinner parties. All the freedoms that were part of every summer before this one.

But what I will also remember about the summer of COVID-19 are the unexpected pleasures: the clarity of the air, the freshness even on the hottest of days. This summer, Massachusetts’ air has been like Maine air, a just-scrubbed clean that has made not being able to go to Maine almost OK. I will also remember…

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A children’s book reminds us how despair can turn to hope

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A children’s book reminds us how despair can turn to hope

A children’s book has made me feel a little better about all that’s going on in the world right now. Not complacent better, or less interested better. Just better.

Who knows how long I’ll feel this way. A day? A week? Until I foolishly watch World News Tonight, bad things from every corner of the earth, the tragic and trivial, crammed into a 30-minus-8-minutes-for-commercials slot? Until the middle of the night when sleep is impossible and everything bad that ever was, is, or will be kidnaps my brain? Until it’s next month or next year and we’re still in the same mess we are in today, with not just a virus killing us but a virulence that is as deadly…

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Seeking a cure for ‘heart fatigue'

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Seeking a cure for ‘heart fatigue'

“Heart fatigue.” That’s how I read it. But it was “Heat fatigue” a friend had written. On Facebook. Her dog had been overheated so she soaked a bath towel with cold water from a hose and draped it over his back. “He seems to really like that,” she wrote, posting a picture of her dog at peace, eyes closed, ears up, sleeping the sleep of the untroubled. I envied the dog. I looked at the towel and wished there were as simple a solution for heart fatigue…

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With more questions than answers, I wonder who to believe

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With more questions than answers, I wonder who to believe

July arrives this week. July. Impossible. March April May June That’s how long we have spent inside obeying the rules. Having our groceries delivered. Washing doorknobs. Disinfecting counters and floors and packages. Staying 6 feet apart from anyone not under our roof. Staying 6 feet apart even from the people we love…

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A blown kiss kindles memories of the young mother I once was

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A blown kiss kindles memories of the young mother I once was

He’s a toddler and he lives next door and because I have been nowhere for months, I watch him more than I would have pre-COVID. I watch him with wonder the way I watched the trees this spring grow from spindly, gray sticks into the lush, green canopies they are now. Pre-COVID, I wouldn’t have been dazzled by the slow, daily growth of both the trees and the boy. I would have noticed spring in all its beauty, of course. And I would have noticed the toddling boy, too, smiled and waved at him before I got into my car. But my head would have been elsewhere. I’d have been thinking about traffic, and where I was going, and did I have my phone? These things would have been my focus, not the little boy next door…

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Kind, good, caring people can help get us through these times

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Kind, good, caring people can help get us through these times

My friend Elaine is not the only one reaching out and doing what she can to give meaning to these strange and uncertain days. Yesterday, I received a video from Francesca, a woman I’ve known since our kids were in high school plays together. The video was of a Halloween party 25 years ago. I didn’t remember the party and neither did my daughter, but there she was on film with all her theater friends in our kitchen, dressed up as characters they’d played, talking into the camera. Francesca’s son had filmed this…

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With the world upside down, I’m learning grace from my grandchildren

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With the world upside down, I’m learning grace from my grandchildren

Charlotte has been home from school for two months now, shut in with adults and her 16-year-old brother. She turned 13 last month. A big birthday, 13. Her mother sent out an e-mail to family and friends. Let’s have a surprise drive-by parade! It rained on her birthday. But Charlotte didn’t care. She woke to balloons and cake and presents and hugs and smiles and Happy Birthday signs strung everywhere. Outside was raw and ugly but inside was just about perfect…

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As the days go by, there’s time for writing and remembering

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As the days go by, there’s time for writing and remembering

He walks up the stairs from his basement office, sometimes in the early afternoon, sometimes closer to evening, and hands me a few typewritten pages, which have come to be the best part of my day. The pages, two, sometimes three, are stapled together. On page 1 in big, bold letters is always the title, and underneath are the date and his name, Bruce Beckham.

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With each day, hoping this virus will end

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With each day, hoping this virus will end

I am writing this on the last day of March. The “In like a lion, out like a lamb” month. But that was before. When the lions of March were a sweet myth with an exit date.

March? April? Tuesday? Friday? The days blur now. And they inch along. “Is it time for lunch?” “Is it 5 o’clock, yet?” And yet, come night, each day feels too short somehow. Stunted. Where did it go? What did I do today?

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Our world shut down, now all we have is time

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Our world shut down, now all we have is time

It’s Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day as I write this, 6 a.m., dark still. I live on a busy street, where on a normal morning, I would have heard sirens already. I haven’t heard sirens in days. After Sept. 11, 2001, when the world was quiet like this, we gathered in our small downtown, holding candles, holding each other. We gathered in churches, restaurants, and bars. In groups we felt buffered. In groups we felt hope.

It’s different this time.

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Following the breadcrumbs of my father’s journey through the war

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Following the breadcrumbs of my father’s journey through the war

I don’t know why it dogs me, why it feels so important to know who my father was before he was my father. He died 15 years ago. Shouldn’t I be over wanting to understand the man who came home from combat and married my mother? “Tell me about the war, Dad,” I asked him when I was a child, a teenager, a young adult and an old adult. “No,” he said every time. “No.”

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