It began with a sign - not a spiritual one, but a billboard. At least that's how I think it began. The billboard was at Disney World, and it asked visitors to consider who they believe had made the greatest contribution to the 20th Century.
Maybe the wording was different. Maybe it was vote for the man of the century. I don't remember. But I found myself mulling over the question, then posing it to everyone I knew.
Read MoreFall River papers didn't cover it, though it happened in their backyard.
It wasn't news. News is about people hurting one another - robbing, lying, beating, killing. News is a health care worker mistreating patients; a doctor overprescribing drugs; a psychiatrist abusing clients. News is about the evil that men do.
But life brims with good, too, and the good far surpasses the evil. If it didn't, people wouldn't have partners, children, friends, pets. No one would nurse, doctor, teach, parent, rescue, feed, guide, inspire, love. No one would lift a finger for others.
Read MoreThursday morning, shortly before noon I dial the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. The phone rings once. A recording answers: "Thank you for calling the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Artery Business Committee. For tourist information, dial 617-536-4100. If you know your party's extension dial it now. If you wish to reach your party by last name, enter pound, star, two."
I enter pound, star, two.
Read MoreI want to laugh at it, say it can't be, dismiss it as science fiction. For that's all it is right now.
Eternal life here on Earth? Impossible. Impractical.
Absolutely intolerable.
Read MoreI never thought I would love her. I never dreamed I could even like her. I answered the phone and heard her voice, unrecognizable after 32 years. When she identified herself and asked me to come and see her, I said yes, out of duty and curiosity and perhaps even old-fashioned respect.
That's what I told myself. That's what I wanted to believe. But I went for more selfish reasons than these. I went to see if she were as mean I remembered; to show her she was wrong; to once and for all open the door on a moment that has colored my life, then slam it shut and lock it forever.
Read MoreWe call her Grambo now. Not that she looks like Sylvester Stallone. He's tall, dark, and gruff. She's short, fair, and sweet. He talks like a gangster. She speaks like a queen. He scowls. She beams.
Grambo, previously known as Grandma, had quadruple bypass surgery two summers ago. Doctors cut her up, replaced veins in her 79-year-old heart with veins from her leg, sewed her back together, and sent her home. She was given…
Read MorePity gets in the way. You know people don't want pity, so you stay away.
Discomfort is a problem, too. Yours. Theirs. Should you go up and say hello? Would a hello be mistaken for pity? What would you say after hello? What would you talk about?
Someone is in a wheelchair and you'd like to ask, "How come you're in a wheelchair? What happened?" Only those sound like the wrong words and because you don't know the right ones, you say nothing.
Read MoreToday is rabbit day.
"Rabbit," I say to my husband before getting out of bed.
"Rabbit," he answers automatically.
"Rabbit," I whisper to my 15-year-old before I go downstairs.
"Rabbit," she mumbles, and returns to sleep.
"Rabbit," I repeat to the 20-year-old asleep on the family room couch. She groans, mutters "rabbit," and puts a pillow over her head.
Read MoreSo now all of a sudden it's Mia who's the bad guy, Mia who has all the problems, Mia who's to blame for the Woody/Mia/Soon-Yi triangle.
This seems to be the latest theory. Why would anynormal woman adopt so many children? Why would any normal woman adopt children with handicaps? Mia Farrow cannot possibly be drawn to these chilren. She cannot possibly enjoy her huge brood. It has to be an act.
Therefore she cannot be what she appears to be.
Read MoreThey don't want to believe it. Or if they believe it, they want to forget.
"Why do you have to keep bringing this up? Why do you continually talk about it? It does no good. It's over. It's in the past. Why can't you just get on with your life?"
They don't understand why at birthdays and holidays and christenings and baptisms, she continues to arrive late - after he's gone. They don't understand why she refuses his gifts, why she's still in therapy, why she has night sweats. They don't understand why sometimes in the middle of the day, when it all comes back to her, she sits and sobs.
Read MoreThere's a story my husband likes to tell every now and then when I'm doing something the wrong way, which means I'm doing it my way, and not his.
The story's about a young couple, newly married, who are having their families - parents and grandparents - over for Easter dinner. The bride wants the meal to be perfect so she goes out and buys the best ham and fresh vegetables and makes an elaborate dessert. Before she puts the ham in the oven, she gets a knife and cuts a slice off each end. Her husband looks at the pieces lying on the counter and says, "Why'd you do that?" And she says, "I don't know. Because my mother always does."
Read MoreHe is wise, respected, serious and well-known. People around the world depend upon him to tell them what they think. Few would dispute his intelligence.
I see him when he is on vacation. He is on a cruise ship for seven days with two children. They are his children, I learn. Perhaps he has shared custody. Perhaps he has them every other weekend and for vacations each year. I don't know.
Read MoreThere is no room for sarcasm or double entendres or psychoanalytical babble with this one. Woody Allen is slime. End of story.
If Allen, who is proof positive that long-term analysis is lethal to mental health, had fallen in love with some youngster he met on a playground, it would be one thing. An aberration, perhaps. Distasteful. Definitely irresponsible. But young girls are exploited by old men every day. The world would have yawned at the news.
Read MoreI phoned her the other day to ask how her pregnancy is coming along. "I'll be glad when it's over," she said in a weary voice. "I'm a nervous wreck…
Read MoreIn the winter I can see the field clearly. The old stone wall which separates the football-size rectangle from the narrow road is only knee-high and the bushes and trees and grasses, thick and lush in summer, are scraggy and thin in the cold.
Nothing blocks the view then. The world is barren. The field is barren. A fret of black branches against a gray sky, or the sun rouging the horizon, or a flurry of snow are the only things that catch the eye.
Read MoreYou don't expect to return to a place 35 years later and find it better than you remembered. Children create castles of cardboard, make creatures of sand, watch clouds and see parades floating by. Children are naturally fanciful.
Adults glance at a cloud-laden sky and think: Rain.
Read MoreThe reason that pigs wallow in mud is because their skin is fair and thin and the hair covering their bodies is sparse and offers little protection from the sun. During the day, pigs burrow in the ground to keep cool. At night they find a stream or a puddle and clean themselves. There is a purpose for what they do.
What, I wonder, is our purpose?
Read MoreI thought I remembered it exactly: my father taking the ceramic dog-bank down from the chest where it sat every day of the year; my mother shaking quarters and dimes and nickels onto the chenille bedspread in their room; the three of us dividing and piling and counting.
Get a knife, they would tell me when the dog had expelled its final coin. I would run into the kitchen and return with a dull blade and poke it through the slit on the top of the dog's head and dig out dollars that were stuck inside, that could be felt more than heard. When the bank was empty, we held our breath and let our eyes savor the piles that stood like silver volcanos on the spread.
Read MoreHe isn't allowed to talk to the press. The rules forbid it and if he breaks the rules he will lose his job and then where will he be?
But where will he be if he holds his tongue and keeps his job and nothing changes? Will he end updead one night, murdered by one of the punks who murder him now in small ways, who hurl insults at him, who threaten him, spit at him, drop garbage in his lap and sucker-punch him for the thrill of it?
Read MoreEveryone recognized him but no one knew who he was.
"Well-known Quincy man dies unknown," the headline said in Saturday's Patriot Ledger.
The story that followed told of a man who frequented Wollaston's businesses, who, every weekday bought the $1 breakfast special at Newcomb Farms; who, every weekend sat at O'Brien's bakery and drank coffee and ate pastry; who talked with clerks and nodded at passersby and bought scratch tickets at the Hancock Street Pharmacy and even shared, when he won, part of his $400 with the girl who'd sold him his lucky ticket.
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