Life, I think, is a train on which each of us has our own compartment, the first-class European kind. People come into that compartment and ride with us a while. Some stay for minutes, some stay for years. But no one stays forever.
Read MoreI never expected it would be like this. I imagined armored cars, tanks, bloodshed, women screaming, men begging, children lined against school walls and shot. Clergy would be tortured, churches burned. Families allowed to live would not be allowed to live together.
Most times I expected worse: The Conelrad alert would sound and be real. Twenty to 30 minutes until death and no time to go home. How would I be brave? How would I not cry in those final moments, not plead for my father and mother?
Read MoreSince October, I have been watching two leaves…
Read MoreThe house is cleaner without them. There are no hair balls in the shower, no wet towels on bedroom floors, no jackets slung over kitchen chairs, no Doritos spilled on the family room couch, no dirty dishes on the counters, no piles of school books gathering dust on the hall stairs
Read MoreHe cried when she was born. "You have a baby sister," his grandma told him and he flung himself on the family room couch and sobbed. He was seven and he'd wanted a brother. A sister was something he already had, something that didn't collect baseball cards and never wanted to play whiffle ball in the back yard. Another sister he could live without…
Read MoreOh if you could see him…
His eyes shine. His skin glows. He grins constantly. Plus he struts. Yes, the man struts. He holds his head just a little lower than the clouds, squares his shoulders and struts - jaunty, eager, proud steps - like a man who has fallen in love.
I suppose, in a way, he has.
Read MoreHome for the summer, my two older children sit and reminisce. Over breakfast, riding together in the car, in the family room late at night, they will be talking about something, anything, and a phrase, a song, a look will trigger a memory and out will come the inevitable, “Remember when?” And then a tale will be told then, a tale I imagined would be sweet and sentimental, in which I, of course, would be the hero. "Remember when you used to get us dismissed…
Read MoreEveryone should have an Aunt Fran. Even the name has a nice ring - Aunt Fran. It sounds friendly, yet elegant…
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BOSTON HERALD, MARCH, 1989
This essay is excerpted from “A Gift of Time” which was published in 1991
“I want my old life back.”
That’s what the woman whispered between sobs.
I heard her, though I was just walking by, walking past, trying not to hear, trying not to look, not to see.
“I want my old life back,” she said again, louder this time, and I stopped walking and looked directly at her, a broken, old woman bent and weeping in a wheelchair.It was a Sunday in February ten years ago and I was at Hollywell Nursing Home in Randolph on a mission looking for help for my own mother, who was not so old but just as broken. I had spent the day visiting nursing homes and even then knew with absolute certainty that this was one of the worst days of my life.
Read MoreSo here we are, two adults, three teenagers and one 11-year-old, two days after leaving Boston, finally at Lake Powell, a crowded place, people scurrying from parking lot to marina with coolers and pillows and cartons of food, looking as diligent as a colony of ants. I am astounded by the crowds of people preparing to go out on the lake, lugging radios and rafts and infinite cases of beer down the long incline to load…
Read More"Look out the window. Look at that view. Don't you love all the open space and the huge sky and the mountains in the distance?”
"We've been looking at open space and mountains for hours. Aren't we almost there?" comes the wail from two of the three teenagers in the back seat…
Read MoreIt is too eerily familiar. The exasperation in her voice. The long sighs. The shifting attitude.
"Do you think this looks nice?" she asked me this morning.
She was scrutinizing herself in the mirror, inspecting her white stretch pants and her extra, extra large white T-shirt that she'd covered with a complimenting white sweat shirt that came to her waist.
Read MoreHe came home for the weekend, the college freshman, carrying his dirty laundry stuffed into a garbage bag. (I've got a present for you, Mom!) the smile on his face so huge and relaxed that, "How's school?" and "How are you doing?" didn't need to be asked…
Read MoreFourteen of them arrive at once.
"Yay You have M&M's "
"Can we have something besides pizza? I don't like pizza."
"I like your sweater. Where'd you get it?"
They range in height from 4 feet to 5 feet, in age from 9 to 11.
Read MoreIt could be worse. You get into a car accident and the car is totaled, but it could be worse. Someone could have been hurt. When someone is hurt, when an arm's broken or stitches are needed it's still the same. It could be worse. Someone could have died. It's the way we live, rationalizing our lives away…
Read More"Christmas is around the corner," I overheard my mother tell a friend when I was 4 or 5 and lived in the city.
I raced into the hall and grabbed my red jacket and hurried down three flights of steps out to the sidewalk.
"Don't you go out of the yard," my mother shouted and I yelled, "I won't, Mom" and did, of course, bolting up the street to get to the corner where she said Christmas would be.
"Christmas is around the corner," I overheard my mother tell a friend when I was 4 or 5 and lived in the city. I raced into the hall and grabbed my red jacket and hurried down three flights of steps out to the sidewalk. "Don't you go out of the yard," my mother shouted and I yelled, "I won't, Mom" and, of course, did bolting up the street to get to the corner where she said Christmas would be. It wasn't there, of course. No tree. No Santa. No reindeer and sleigh. Just concrete and macadam and three-decker houses lined up on either side. It was my first disappointment with looking around corners.
Read MoreIn the town where I grew up in the 1960s, there was a priest, a young, energetic, dedicated man who embraced God and the church with a passion I will never forget. Every mass seemed a high mass when he celebrated it; every prayer, every blessing seemed a promise. Words diminish whatever it was he brought to the altar with him. And yet I have never found in any other church what I found in my youth in this man's presence.
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