The path is familiar. I have been walking it for nine summers now. I know where the roots of trees protrude, where rocks jut, where poison ivy hides, where blueberries and raspberries nestle, where puddles form when it rains, where tiny yellow birds perch, where the brush is so thick that the path seems to disappear, where the broadest view of the Atlantic is…
Read MoreThese things didn't have to happen: a pesticide spill that killed every living thing in California's Sacramento River; a bus crash that took the lives of Girl Scouts; a train derailment that spilled a corrosive chemical onto a California highway; the mass murdersof Jeffrey L. Dahmer; the entire BCCI mess.
Each one of these tragedies was preventable. Each happened solely because someone or a group of someones was not doing his job.
Read MoreHe won't recognize himself. Neither will she. That's the tragedy. No one has ever videotaped a day in his life. She has never been tape recorded on the phone, in a crowd, talking to someone at work. Neither one knows how nasty they sound, act, behave, ARE. So they go on undermining friends, castigating co- workers, talking about people they pretend to like, all the while with a smile on their lips, as if other people's intimacies, insecurities, secrets, and problems are fodder for public entertainment. If they could see themselves…
Read MoreI thought I would feel terrible. I thought I would cry. That's what I used to do when my son had a birthday.
When he turned one, I wanted him to be six months again so he would be content to lie in my arms. And when he turned two, I wanted him to be one so I could watch, for a second time, his first steps. Most of his life I've been like this, wishing time…
Read MoreThe soon to be 21-year-old came home from school last weekend and mentioned - solely to induce guilt, I know - how the mother of one of his roommates had suddenly appeared at their doorstep one day, like some angel of mercy, her arms laden with bags and bags of groceries. "She even made us meatballs," he said.
My guilt was instantaneous. Groceries and meatballs…
Read MoreLife, 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…
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