It's a simple story of simple goodness that won't make Oprah or headlines because these kinds of things never do. People helping people. One ordinary woman making a difference in the lives of thousands.
Ho hum. Pass the clicker and turn…
Read MoreDear Bill,
So you went and got yourself a puppy. Oh, I know he is beautiful and loving and adorable and he smells so sweet and his fur is soft and when he looks up at you with those big copper eyes, you know there isn't anything in the world you wouldn't do for him. A ball of fur that sheds and drools and whimpers in the night, and you're totally hooked. Go figure. But, hey, I understand. I've been there, right there, in your shoes.
Read MoreShe slipped them into an envelope and mailed them without a note for no note was necessary. The pictures, photocopies but as clear as the autumn days on which they were taken, arrived brimming with words.
"Mama. Come here! Look at me, Mama…
Read MoreI named her, so I guess it's okay for me to brag a little. She slept in my room when she was born and she lived in my house and I walked her around the block, countless times, pretending she was mine or part mine.
And for a while she was.
Read MoreWe met for lunch Thursday. I hadn't seen her in so many years that I was afraid I might not recognize her. But I did - instantly. There she was waving to me from a table, same blonde hair, same big smile. People don't change. They just become more of who they are.
We were good friends for a while, way back when friendship was easy, when every day was play day. We were pregnant together, due within weeks of each other. We were pregnant for the first time - excited, scared and young.
Read MoreIt's a curious custom, taking things you don't want and no longer need, dragging them to the front lawn, marking them with a price tag, then selling them.
But that's what we do. A dime for a Johnny Tilliston record. It's not high finance. It's trading.
At the end of the day, all you have is a pocketful of change, but it's like when you were a kid and shook coins out of a piggy bank. It's found money. And it's fun.
Read MoreIt wasn't a real vacation, not the kind you write home about. "Dear Family, Today we saw the Eiffel Tower and toured the Louvre and tomorrow we're headed for Versailles. Gotta hurry and get this in the mail because we're off to dinner." No, it wasn't like this at all.
Read More“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a ferris wheel when in pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring moons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after." - Natalie Babbitt
Read MoreIt takes awhile for me to notice things.
The billboards have been gone for months, but I didn't start missing them until this week.
I looked for them on Route 128, then on the Mass Pike and was suprised when I didn't find any.
Read MoreThe last time I saw them they were two kids, in love, newly married, kissing in front of God and everyone as the boat that dropped them off at Pine Island sped away. The music soared, the lights came on, the film went black and that was it. Johnny and Molly were together.
Fast forward 38 years.
To celebrate the start of a summer season of classic films, American Movie Classics dusted off the 1959 Warner Brothers hit "A Summer Place," and showed…
Read More'Smile at each other - it doesn't matter who it is - and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.' - Mother Teresa
She is the antithesis of everything we worship in this country. She is old and we revere young. She is wrinkled and stooped, and we admire smooth and tall. She is humble and we're used to boastful. She is poor and we idolize wealth.
She is a bent, old woman who drapes cloth on her body only to cover herself, who doesn't dye her hair or work out or wear makeup or jewelry or spend even an ounce of energy worrying about what she looks like.
Read More'What I wish is that I could do all the things I used to hate to do - cut the grass, wait in line."
That's what he said. And that's what I've thought about since Thursday night when he said it.
The young man was on "48 Hours," a boy from Milford who caught a wave on Martha's Vineyard the wrong way last Labor Day weekend and is now a paraplegic. "48 Hours" filmed his long, slow days of recovery and therapy and adjustment. It was a superb documentary because it didn't gloss over pain.
Read MoreSo it's a hokey holiday. All those mushy cards. All that cold coffee and burned toast served on makeshift trays to tired mothers who would prefer to skip breakfast and sleep just a little longer. All the overpriced flowers that are dead in two days and perfumes that smell like bug spray and sweaters that are too big and pants that are too tight and housewares that you never use…
Read MoreIt's my fault. I always liked them too much. I never understood when people said, "Aren't you glad vacation is over?" or "Oh, no, another snow day. The kids are home again.” Even when they were small and awoke ready to play in the middle of the night, even when they cried every time I attempted to go out, I always thought how lucky…
Read MoreShe has always rebounded. That's the thing. Push her down and she comes popping back like one of those weighted inflatable toys that kids can punch but can never topple over. She has persisted like the Energizer Bunny, and rallied like the Six Million Dollar Man, and though life has taken her breath away, time and time again, it has never been able to stop her. Just one more trip to the hospital. Just one more close call. Just one more step back from the starting line, but that's okay because we've been here before…
Read MoreEvery afternoon she races in from school, raids the refrigerator, then heads for the piano.
"So how was your day?" I shout over Jimmy crack corn and I don't care.
"Fine," she answers, distracted, immediately lost in the notes of a song she has been drumming on her desk and rehearsing in her head throughout the day.
Read MoreHe takes you back to a night you thought you'd forgotten, when there was laughter and champagne and glasses clinking and young people laughing, and you were one of the young people, dressed to kill, out for an evening, out on the town.
He whisks you to Broadway, and ushers you to a front-row seat where you heard, maybe for the first time, Judy Garland, John Raitt, Mary Martin.
Read MoreShe doesn't say, "I can't" or "I won't," or "Why me?" She simply doesn't complain. She wakes up in the morning, puts a smile on her face and plays the hand she's been dealt. She has to use a slide board to get from her bed to her wheelchair. The middle-of-the-night transfer is the toughest. It's dark and she's tired and it's a huge effort to shimmy onto the board, position the board onto the wheelchair, ease her body into the chair and wheel out of the bedroom into the bathroom…
Read MoreThe masks stumped everyone. They were beautiful, artfully decorated, thoughtful, clever representations of who we are. They had been our pre-party assignment. Ellen had bought them, full-faced white things, and given them to us with instructions to decorate them, in secret, in a way that would say something about our inner selves. We were then to bring our finished product hidden in a paper bag to her annual neighborhood ladies night…
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