My friend Anne's daughter died of cystic fibrosis eight-and-a-half years ago. Amy was 11, in the sixth grade, and my daughter Lauren's best friend. We knew Amy was going to die, everyone knew, but we knew it intellectually the way we know that someday we'll grow old, and someday babies not even born yet will have gray hair. We didn't believe it, couldn't imagine it. Someday was theory. Amy's death was an eternity away…
Read MoreI met them the first time when they walked into my mother-in-law's house with their parents on New Year's Day four years ago.
"My brother's daughter, Jeannie, is coming with her family to visit all the way from New York. Won't you stop by and visit, too?" my mother-in-law phoned to ask.
I bet I groaned about having to visit someone I hardly knew. I bet I complained about all the things I had to do: take down the tree, vacuum up the pine needles, get my life in order, ready the slate for the new year.
I know I went to my mother-in-law's intending to stay just a little while. But that was before I met Jessica, Tabitha and Xena.
Read More"Is he still handsome?" That's what people always ask. That and "How old is he?" and "Can he still sing?" and "Is he really as nice as he seems?"
Yes, he's handsome. He has thick gray hair, twinkley eyes, a great smile and a younger man's trim build.
How old is he? He's 30-50, my sister-in-law would say. Eighty is how the world translates it. But the number deceives.
Read MoreIt begins with a tickle in the back of the throat. Nothing to worry about. Just a tickle. Probably a dog or cat hair lodged in the esophagus. There are dog and cats hairs all over this house. I drink orange juice and hot tea to dislodge it. I say it is nothing, that it will go away.
"No it won't. You're getting a cold," the chorus around me sings. "There's a terrible cold going around and you're getting it."
Read MoreIt begins with a tickle in the back of the throat. Nothing to worry about. Just a tickle. Probably a dog or cat hair lodged in the esophagus. There are dog and cats hairs all over this house. I drink orange juice and hot tea to dislodge it. I say it is nothing, that it will go away.
"No it won't. You're getting a cold," the chorus around me sings. "There's a terrible cold going around and you're getting…
Read Moret arrived in the mail, compliments of a good friend. "Christmas Ease -287 Top Tips for a Delightful Stress-Free Holiday" by Michelle West, certainly piqued my interest, but it was, I thought smugly, just a bit premature. It was only October when I found it in my mailbox. The days were still balmy. Leaves clung to the trees. Roses bloomed on the vine. Christmas was eons away.
I stacked the book on top of another my friend sent, on how to get rid of cellulite. I realize now that if I'd opened both when they arrived I would not be in the shape I'm in today.
Read MoreOf all the birthdays in all the years, this one should be the most insignificant. It's wedged among benchmarks. My oldest daughter just turned 21. My youngest teeters on 16. Our best friends just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. My husband and I will be celebrating our 25th in January…
Read MoreUsually I read these things and take them for what they are: a warning that once I would have memorized, but that now I just peruse. I don't have little kids anymore. I don't need to worry about toy safety.
But the story was about Fisher Price's Little People and though it has been years since I picked up the cow and put him back in his barn, and arranged the plastic children in their swings, I finished the article because of all the toys my children had, Fisher Price Little People were my favorite. Even the words on a printed page evoke nostalgia.
Read MoreA social worker would call her the "primary caretaker." You probably know someone like her.
She's the one daughter in a family of five, six, ten who, when her mother gets sick, packs up her pre-school kids - even if they have colds, even if they're in the middle of a birthday party - to drive her mother to a doctor, pick up a prescription, stop at a market, then go back to her mother's house and whip up something for dinner.
Or she's the one with the full-time job who visits her father every day on her way home.
Read MoreThe state Department of Social Services should be dismantled because it is "inherently conflicting" for one agency to provide both child protection and family support services, according to a new report.
The report, issued by a committee of child advocates, academics and citizens, recommends the state establish a new Department of Child Protection to investigate child abuse and neglect.
Read MoreSo there you are at the theater, with your family, having spent a couple hundred dollars for the privilege of sitting in the rear of a balcony, now called a mezzanine, because at $55 a seat, mezzanine has a far sweeter sound. The French word is elegant - and also deluding.
But you don't care, because this is a Special Occasion. You're here to relax, to enjoy yourself and become immersed in the performance.
Read MoreThe noise has stopped, finally. Or is it only an intermission?
I look out the window and see the men across the street, talking together. Half the yard is still covered with leaves. They and The Machine have been working for hours. The whining, unremitting drone awakened me early, far too early on a non-work day. The sound was like pain. I wanted to run from it. But I couldn't. It filled the house. It filled me.
Read MoreIf she were a person, she'd be 13 now, a teenager, seeking her identity, testing boundaries, being a bit of a pain in the neck. Her behavior in human terms is, therefore, perfectly normal. She is just going through a stage, I tell my husband who didn't buy the stage bit for his kids and now refuses to accept it for a dog. She is totally out of control, he counters. And guess whose fault that is?
Read MoreYou have to see this through three sets of eyes.
There's Frankie Rodriguez, 19, hot stuff, a right-handed pitcher last season for the Red Sox' Single-A Carolina League affiliate in Lynchburg, Va. Scouts look at him and see the majors. His career prospects are soaring. He can taste success.
Of course, he attracts fans. Young, pretty girls cheer him on the field and wait for him after the game. He has his choice. On the night of Aug. 24, he gives a pair of girls who've followed him from game to game all summer long, a ride home. One of the girls says she doesn't want to go home, that she'd rather go to Rodriguez's apartment instead. When she gets there, she asks her friend to leave Rodriguez's bedroom so that they can have sex. Afterward, he drives both girls home.
Read MoreWe are talking about going to bed early and pulling the covers over our heads and closing out the world and hibernating until May.
Only it's just talk. We can't hibernate. Morning comes; the clock says it's morning, but it's hard to tell. The day is gray. Our mood is gray. The trees are bare, black, bone thin. We are bone-weary. Burdened.
It's cold. It's damp. Thanksgiving looms. Then it's Christmas with all the shopping, spending, racing. For what? For whom?
Read MoreI expected him to be angry, furious, out of control. I expected him to be screaming and yelling "Why."
I should have known better. I have never seen him angry. Wounded, puzzled, defeated, yes. But I have never seen hate in his eyes.
Not the first time I met him, shortly after his daughter's death, when I drove to his house and sat on his couch and looked through albums filled with photos of a beautiful, smiling little girl.
Read MoreRosemary calls for directions Sunday afternoon as I'm sitting at the kitchen table clipping a story about "smart cars."
Smart cars - as opposed to dumb cars - are automobiles which have built-in computerized road maps on their dashboards. Little sensors in the car's wheels actually measure distance traveled and a built-in magnetic compass instructs the driver of a car, in an R2D2 voice, how to get from point A to point B.
Read MoreI'm at a shoe store at the check- out counter when a boy who works there walks over to the register and tells the girl who is waiting on me that he's going outside for a cigarette.
The boy looks young, no more than 17. He's thin and cute and reminds me of my son at that age.
Read MoreYves Alexandre writes simply and truthfully; I do not want to change her words. I want to repeat them because they beg to be heard; but I have to compress them because of space.
The 17-year-old student at Somerville High wrote her story for the September issue of the 21st Century, a newspaper published in Newton, written entirely by teens. Alexandre's story is compelling, a disturbing first person account of racism.
Read MoreFact and fiction. They blend. A person steps into the sun at high noon and he and his shadow are one. Both exist. Both are seperate entities, but for a moment they merge.
Schuyler, population 400, is fact. It's a tiny town nestled among the mountains in Nelson County, Virginia. Walton's Mountain is but a shadow of Schuyler, a creation of its most famous son, novelist and screen writer Earl Hamner.
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