It was Gilda Radner's father's favorite expression: It's always something, he used to say. Radner used these words all the time in her comedy and as a title for her book about her valiant struggle with ovarian cancer. It was a perfect title, because it is always something. That's what life's about. Climbing hills. Meeting challenges. Facing problems. If it's not one thing, it's another. This is fact.
Read MoreI met her last August at a party. My husband knew her husband. They'd golfed together a few times. But I didn't know her at all. We were seated at a table, just the four of us, celebrating a mutual friend's 25th wedding anniversary. But I wasn't in a party mood. I was preoccupied with something, though what I can't recall. My journal shows no entry for that date or for the day before so the details are all forgotten.
Read MoreIt used to be cute that I couldn't cook. When I was young and newly married, everyone forgave me my failures. People gushed that my fried bologna and beans were "different," my fried hamburger and french fries an "important staple," my fried eggs and bacon an "interesting choice for dinner." I didn't realize that these personal favorites were not actually adored by crowds, not even when practically everyone I knew, including my husband, would insist that we send out for pizza.
Read MoreI wasn't there. I hadn't been born. I don't remember.
And yet I do have memories pieced from stories I was told and stories overheard, and television and movies and books. A photograph of a uniformed boy hung on a parlor wall, but the memory is fuzzy, the boy's face unclear. Army? Navy? Air Force? In which did he serve? I don't know. I was five, maybe six. I don't remember the boy's name; I couldn't pick him out of a crowd. But I know he was a boy, not a man.
Read MoreThey are seventh and eighth graders, ages 11, 12 and 13. I teach them writing once a week, in an after-school program they have chosen to attend. They are bright kids, interested and interesting, but more important than smart, they're sweet. Half child, half teen, human beings brimming with potential. In class last week I asked if they thought public schools should give out condoms. Eighteen of the 19 who responded said yes. Here's a sample of what they said: "I think it is a good idea to distribute condoms throughout the school system," wrote an 11-year old
Read MoreThere's a lot that's weird about Michael Jackson. But he's been endearingly weird. In 1978, when he made his film debut as the Scarecrow in "The Wiz," he actually had to be coaxed into removing his costume and makeup every day. He has always loved fantasy, has always preferred being someone else to being himself. He admits that he talks to mannequins and that in his mansion, they have their own room.
Read MoreThe argument is that they're going to do it anyway. "Nothing will stop kids from having sex. Nothing has ever stopped them. At least if they use condoms they'll be safe." That's what my friend says, and three 14-year-olds agree. These 14-year-olds, like most American kids, are used to watching people "do it" on TV, are accustomed to reading magazines brimming with sexual advice, are constantly digesting ads that romanticize and trivialize sex, are always listening to "sex is natural, sex is good, not everybody does it, but everybody should" songs. Many get the same message when they see their parents leave home and them for a life of sex and ease.
Read MoreThe TV clicker is missing. It vanished 10 days ago somewhere between 7 p.m. and 8:15 p.m.. The 14-year-old had it last. This is fact. It was in my hand and she stole it from me. "Give me that," she said, grabbing the remote control before I could. I had mistakenly changed the station instead of turning up the volume during a riveting scene of "Life Goes On." The entire family yelped. "I can't believe you still don't know how to use this thing," my daughter said.
Read MoreIt's there every autumn, even now, 20 years later. When the light thins, when the air clears, a picture emerges like a developing Polaroid, or maybe it's pentimento. Maybe the image is always there, hidden under layers of life…
Read MoreMy husband found the "contract" while searching for something else. "Remember this?" he said, handing it to me. I looked at the lined yellow paper and remembered instantly. It was the note my daughter signed last January, the afternoon she got her dog.
"If we get a dog" the note says in my husband's neat handwriting. "Lauren is responsible for:
Walking, feeding and grooming the dog…
Read MoreNo doubt you read the story, or glanced at it at least.
It was short, buried inside the paper; a tragedy, yes, but there weren't any pictures or sidebars full of family history. Nobody died. It was a small tragedy, comparatively speaking, just another hit-and-run early last month. Two young men, one 17, one 22, were hit by a car while crossing the street in Weymouth. The men were airlifted to Boston hospitals.
Read MoreThe child in me sees things clearly. She watches as I struggle to identify what's wrong with public education. She waits as I read the experts, even allows me to make some vague generalizations studded with silver-dollar words before tapping me on the shoulder and saying: Wait just a minute. Do you really want to know what's wrong with public schools? Do you really want to know how to make things better? Then put your notes down, sit a while and think.
Read MoreNothing seems wrong. Midge Foster, 46, a woman with blond hair and a warm smile, answers the door in sweatpants and a shirt, greets her guest, pours two cups of coffee and the pair sit in the living room and talk in normal voices, as if they are talking about normal things. But what they are discussing is not normal. It's something that wasn't supposed to have happened. Three years ago, Foster, who lives in North Attleboro and whose only daughter is grown, joined the convent. Two and half years later, before taking her final vows, she decided to leave.
Read MoreI look out my office window and see the giant spider's web, which had filled half the front yard, hanging in pieces. He/she/they didn't totally destroy it this time around. Two weeks ago, on a Sunday morning I opened my front door and the web was gone, just yarn on the ground. My husband wove it again. He took more white yarn and cut two more stakes and strung the wool as a spider would do, carefully, methodically.
Read MoreThey were walking down the street coming toward each other from opposite directions, carrying books, obviously on their way home from school.
She wore a cotton skirt and a navy blue sweater and a white headband in her dark brown hair. He wore pants and a green-and-white windbreaker and a Little League baseball cap. Both were about 9 or 10 years old and strangers, you could tell, because they didn't hurry toward one another, or wave, or roll their eyes, or smile. But they didn't study the ground or turn away, either.
Read MoreHere I am in the middle of the road, a solid yellow line going in both directions.
What do I think about abortion?
I try not to think about abortion. It's too complicated, too controversial. I back away from the issue. You don't know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. Who am I to tell anyone else what she should do? Judge not lest ye be judged. And yet, and yet ...
Read MoreWhen she was little she clung to me and said, "You're my best friend in the whole wide world." She used to cry when I went away, for a night, for a weekend. "Why can't you take me?" she would ask. And I would explain, "Because this party is for grown-ups. Because this is a business trip. Because you'd be bored." "No I wouldn't, Mommy. I'd never be bored around you."
Such absolute, unconditional love.
Read MoreAll the time Anita Hill was speaking, all the hours she sat calmly, politely answering what I considered to be vicious, personal attacks on her word, I believed her. I believed her because she was unflappable. I believed her because she was well-educated and well-spoken. I believed her becausethere was no apparent reason for her to lie. What did she have to gain? Why would she expose herself to humiliation and inquisition, if she were not telling the truth? Mostly I believed her because I put myself in her place.
Read MoreSome lives you have to imagine. Billions of moments lived, a million experiences are often reduced to a few words:"I met her when she was 19 and I was 23." The eyes shine, old eyes, but bright, still, when he talks about her. He doesn't say she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. He doesn't say…
Read MoreI write words and the words mean nothing, because I write about what's here and not what isn't here. And it's the void, the emptiness, that is the story. A man and a woman sit in the living room of their immaculate suburban home. On a table there are ceramic sneakers. On the couch there is a stuffed dog. Underneath the coffee table there is a real dog, a basset hound. On the walls there are pictures, and on the credenza more pictures. None of these things matters. They are weights which keep the people from floating away. They are props from a play long closed.
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