She did it for her children. You listen to her and you know that there is good in people, that the good is innate, a gift from God, because she didn't learn good in her house, she wasn't exposed to it there. There she learned evil and hurt and hate. Her father put her on a pedestal, called her his little princess, bought her party dresses, then he got drunk and sexually abused her…
Read MoreThis is not a big thing. Unfortunately it's just a small sign of the times. If you don't listen to rock music or watch MTV, either voluntarily because you're insane or involuntarily because you have kids, then you don't even know this is going on. All the screaming and crotch-grabbing have passed you by…
Read MoreThis is the way it was supposed to be: The neighbors would be gathered in the driveway and he would appear, his car just polished, and he would step out of it, dressed in a white tuxedo jacket holding roses that he bought for her. He would ring the bell, and her mother would answer and he would walk into the front hall and there she'd be, poised at the top of the steps, a vision in satin and lace. Her beauty would make him shy, suddenly, and he would tremble a little putting the corsage on her wrist…
Read MoreThere are people who reach out to others just because
There she is, not his wife, not his daughter, not any blood relation, caring for him, cleaning his house, shopping for his food, taking him back and forth to the doctor, then to the hospital, giving him time she doesn't have. She has two young children and works two jobs. But she does all this not because she has to, but because she wants to…
Read MoreThis is the third time I have come here. I should be at ease, but I'm not. All day the appointment has hung over me like a veiled threat. It's just a routine check-up, I know. I have nothing to fear. And yet...
Read MoreOne more week and the ride will be over. I can feel it slowing down, hear the music easing to a halt. I'm trying hard not to anticipate the end, to savor the moment and luxuriate in now. But tomorrow is in the shadows, in the shrinking days, in the orange-red of the mountain ash, in the still, August nights, and in my children who are so eager for the ride to end…
Read MoreThe story ran in The Patriot Ledger last Monday and it's been on my mind since. I thought about it when I went to visit my cousin who has three young children but works more than 30 hours a week, nights and weekends, because she has to if she's to make ends meet. She doesn't see her husband much because he's working 12-hour days. But that's the way it is. She doesn't complain. She doesn't have time to…
Read MoreThe writing is tacky. There are too many "My darlings," and exclamation marks and phrases like "there were no longer words or thoughts, only a union beyond mind, beyond time, beyond the world." But that's not what's wrong with "Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind…”
Read MoreThe 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…
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