Her life, like all lives, matters

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We were months away from Christmas when she said it. There was no self-pity in her tone. She was matter-of-fact. "I've never done much of anything with my life. I'm just another face in the crowd. The world would have gotten along just fine without me." She then went on to explain how ordinary she was. She was just a wife, just a mother. She worked in an office with a dozen other people who did the same job she did. There was nothing special about her. She didn't have a great mind or a great talent. Her existence was, she said, not necessary.

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Time to reflect is the best gift of all

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They keep asking me what I want for Christmas. "Do you want a book, Mom? Do you want a gift certificate to the movies? Gloves? A sweater? Give us a hint." I keep telling them that what I want they can't buy. I want time. An extra day between Monday and Tuesday. Two extra days. Ten extra nights. A dozen hours added to today. Huge chunks of time between now and Christmas Day to slow down, enjoy, luxuriate, bask in the smells and sounds and feeling of this season. I want time to sit in front of the Christmas tree and re-read "The Gift of the Magi," and "A Christmas Carol" and "A Christmas Memory."

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Holiday shopping: Love made it fun

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The woman was hassled. You could see it in her eyes, in the way they darted about the place, and in her footsteps, quick and impatient, eager to keep walking past. But the storefront intrigued the little girl at her side. "What does the sign say, Mommy?" the child asked. "It says, `All items $1,"' the woman explained. "You mean everything in that store costs a dollar?" the child said.

"That's right," the mother replied.

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An excess of riches

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The OxFam banquet was a month ago, an event associated with Thanksgiving, not Christmas. And yet the image created there lingers, because what was glimpsed isn't seasonal. It's constant, the way things are every day. That night hundreds of people came to the great hall at the Park Plaza Castle to either dine at a table dressed up for a celebration, to have a good meal, sip wine and be feted; or to sit on the floor and eat rice. It was the luck of the draw that divided the group. Everyone paid $25. But everyone wasn't treated equally.

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Life's forgotten become family at Pine Street Inn

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I should have counted the steps from the Herald. It couldn't have been many. It was no more than a five-minute walk. And yet the walk took me to the other side of the world. The Pine Street Inn isn't on Pine Street. It's on Harrison Avenue, in an old building that looks like most old buildings in this city, brick on the outside,cinder block on the inside. I arrived there with preconceptions. The homeless are alcoholics, drug users, people who have…

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Christmas 'Things' Evoke Memories

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Christmas 'Things' Evoke Memories

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…

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For `survivors' the pain never ends

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If 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.

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Child is the real victim of divorce

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Sometimes 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.

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Are you a slob? Just blame poor grandmom

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My 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."

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`Garbage' movie

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My 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.

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Lesson of life is enjoy the journey, focus on the good

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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.

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Courage speaks in a whisper

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I 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.

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Cooking up a new tradition for the Thanksgiving feast

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It 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.

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War's trauma remembered

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I 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.

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Adolescents talk about sex, not love

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They 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

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Michael Jackson let himself be used

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There'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.

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Condoms: The `safe sex' myth

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The 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.

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The case of the missing clicker

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The 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.

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Molly Breaks Training, `Contract'

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Molly Breaks Training, `Contract'

My 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…

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