This always happens. In the aftermath of tragedy, we look for someone to blame. If we can, we blame the victim. What was Sharon Tate doing with all those people in her house when her husband was out of town? Why would an intelligent woman ever jog through Central Park after dark? Why was Nicole Simpson with Ron Goldman anyway? Blame insulates us from tragedy. Blame gives us a kind of control…

It was Thanksgiving week, a time when kids, especially young kids, tend to be off the wall. Holidays do this to children. They're like horses on the home stretch who know the barn is just over the hill. All they want is to break into a gallop and keep galloping until they get there. A teacher's job isn't just to keep them trotting along…

Six of them came for the weekend, five children and their mother. The mother and the two littlest ones left Sunday afternoon, and three stayed. Ages 12, 10 and 8, they are still sleeping at 9 o'clock on Monday morning.

I have tiptoed around the house since dawn, sneaking down the steps, shushing the dog, whispering to my husband, soundlessly making coffee…

Dottie Scott took the framed print off her wall and gave it to me the summer before my first child was going off to college. "There are two things you give your children. One is roots, the other is wings.” I hung this saying in my office, above my desk, so I've been forced to think about it regularly over the years. Roots have never been a problem for me. They have been easy to give. Wings, on the other hand, continue to elude…

We had lunch with Sophie and Sam one day. It was open-seating on a two-week cruise. We were led to their table and for an hour we made small talk Where are you from? What do you do? From Montreal now, they were both European born. Sophie had been a doctor…

It never lost its magic the way most things do. You get older, you look up close and you see the strings on puppets, cards up the trickster's sleeve. Childhood pleasures seldom stand up to adult scrutiny. Except every once in a while, the magic lingers, and a long-awaited moment doesn't disappoint.

When my friend Beth was in fifth grade, she prayed for the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world to crown the…

How I hate contests. I hate them because they divide people into winners and losers and there are always more losers than winners, more people walking away with their heads bowed than with their heads held high.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I had been the first kid always picked for a team. But from Red Rover to kickball to softball, I never was…

They all come back. Every time there's another delay in the still pending drunk driving legislation. Every time someone shrugs off drinking and driving as something everyone does. Every time some judge who should know better treats drunk drivers as good guys who've slipped up a little, but didn't really mean to do anything wrong. Then, every parent…

Normally, he is like Henry Higgins: an "ordinary man, even-tempered and good-natured whom you'd never hear complain, who has the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein." But let the Bruins in his life …

And my husband becomes a wild man. Here's a guy who is generally unflappable. We miss a plane to Lincoln, Nebraska because someone read…

The dress was in a Filene's bag, upstairs, in my bedroom, on top of the ironing board. I bought it Saturday, brought it home, tried it on, didn't like it and was planning on returning it. It never occurred to me that someone would actually come into my room, steal the bag and leave the dress behind.

But this is exactly what…

I bought her bright blue stretch pants and a bright blue flowered blouse to match. My mother never wore stretch pants. Still, she put them on and left the house.

'How come you don't wear your new outfit to work, Mom…

Another year passes, another begins. Amy died 10 years ago today, in her mother's arms, struggling to stay alive even at the end. Every breath meant another few minutes of everything she knew, everyone she loved.' I want you to come with me,' she whispered to her mother as death approached. 'I wish I could, sweetie,' her mother said holding her, holding to her. 'But this is something you have to do …