Things aren't supposed to matter. I know this. Possessions don't define a life. And yet they bring back life, resurrect small moments, at least.
Every Christmas I am struck by this. I expect to unearth dusty boxes of Christmas decorations, carry them upstairs, open them and find just faded things. I was sure that once my children were grown, once they no longer clamored to help unwrap the creche and the reindeer…
Read MoreIf they walked into the room on crutches or wheeled themselves in chairs; if they had missing arms and legs or wore bandages, or screamed in pain, then they would be noticed. But they do not scream, at least not in public, and if their eyes are red no one knows why. They look like everyone else. The men wear jackets and ties. The women wear dresses or suits and make-up. The kids look like kids anywhere. Nothing appears to be wrong with any of them. And yet everything is.
Read MoreSometimes you don't want to hear it. You want to drive past the house, away from problems that shouldn't exist at all.
He said this. She said that. He has a lawyer. She has a lawyer. Two adults who vowed to love each other now spend their time tearing each other apart. And in the middle there is always a child, a bewildered child, who loves them both. This time the child is not even 3 when Mommy leaves.
Read MoreMy mother-in-law makes her bed the minute she gets out of it. So does my friend, Anne. Pat keeps Windex and paper towels in the bathroom and wipes down the sink in the morning before she leaves for work. Caryn folds clothes when the dryer buzzes. A different Ann vacuums her garage once a week. Each insists that what she does is easy. "If you make your bed right away, it's done for the day," my mother-in-law likes to say. "Plus it tidies up the room." "If you empty the dryer when it buzzes, then you don't have to iron the clothes," Caryn continually tells me. "It only takes a second. And it saves so much time."
Read MoreMy fault. I chose to go to the movie. No one forced me. My 14-year-old had seen it the night before.
"It was so scary," she said.
She hated it. I assumed I'd love it because I like scary movies - "Psycho" scary, "Fatal Attraction" scary, bloodless, I'm-gonna-get-you, bogeyman in the closet, scary.
"Cape Fear" I thought was that kind of movie. I knew it was about a guy, just out of prison, who stalks and terrorizes the lawyer he blames for his long prison term. I anticipated revenge in terms of psychological horror - footsteps on the stairs, creaking doors, shadows in the dark, spine-tingling menace. What I didn't expect was unrelenting violence, Freddy Krueger style.
Read MoreIt 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.
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