The tragic shares space with the trivial. It's how we cope. It's how we absorb what is: bitter coffee diluted with cream. "Crisis in Kosovo" the computer reports, right next to "Roof leaking? Bank One - Home equity lines. Apply on-line before the flood." "Kosovo Albanians Forced to Help Lay Mines." "First USA Platinum VISA on AOL only." What to worry about? Life and death or low-interest loans?
Read MoreMy friend, a priest, tells this tale at Christmas. It is, after all, set on a December day. But I think it's a Good Friday story, too. It goes like this: A farmer lives with his wife and children somewhere off the beaten path. Picture Robert Frost country, a house, a field, a barn. It is Christmas Eve and the wife and two children are dressed for church. "Come with us," the wife says to her husband as he walks her to the car. He shakes his head. He's not a believer. "I'll see you when you get back," he replies. The man goes inside, pours some coffee, opens the newspaper. And then it starts to snow.
Read MoreIt's been all dress rehearsals until now. I left, she left, but we always came back to one another. That was the ending. When she was an infant, I left her for the first time to go to a party at the Ponkapoag Civic. I didn't want to go. But everyone said "She'll be fine." So I went and kept looking at the clock.
Read MoreA schmaltzy, feel-good thing came over the Internet this week. I printed and saved it because sometimes feel-good schmaltz is nice, a kind of flannel for the heart, soft and warm and comforting.
It's a long piece, however, three typed pages, so this is just a sample. The theme is "I've learned." "I've learned - "That no matter how much I care some people just don't care back. That it takes years to build up trust and only seconds to destroy it. "I've learned - "That it's not what you have in your life but who you have in your life that counts." I got to thinking that I've learned a few things too. Some not so soft, but warm still, and useful, rather like an itchy wool scarf.
Read MoreGetting back on the horse. Buckling up and down. The party's over, the holidays are past. The lights are packed in boxes, the tree's in the trash, the presents put away, the cookies eaten, the chocolates from Hilliard's mercifully gone.It's time to swear off junk food and…
Read MoreIn his baby book there are pictures of my son sitting on his father's lap, a "before" picture in which soft, white curls frame his baby face and an "after" picture in which the baby face is the same and only the curls are missing…
Read MoreI imagine 20 years or 40 or a lifetime later, a person driving by the spot where a loved one had died would slow down, look at the landscape and remember. That person might feel not the sharp pain of new loss, but the memory of sorrow. The time might never come when that bend in the road, or that cross walk, or that grown over path, the place where life permanently changed, was simply another part of the road…
Read MoreThey were just kids three years ago. Raquel was 15 and Andrea barely 20 and if life wasn’t always as sweet as ribbon candy, it was sometimes.
Then came the accident.
It was November 3, 1995. Their mother, Luella…
Read MoreWhat you want is to turn back the clock, to make it Tuesday morning again, early, and make the accident not have happened, to change the confluence of things - the rain, the timing, a car being where is was? A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later and what is would not be. What you want is to give three dead children and one broken one back to their parents, whole…
Read More“I want my old life back.” That’s what the woman whispered between sobs.
I heard her, though I was just walking by, walking past, trying not to hear, trying not to look, not to see.
“I want my old life back,” she said again, louder this time, and I stopped walking and looked directly at her, a broken, old woman bent and…
Read MoreThe backpacks look alike. This is my sole defense. But I don't mention this as we drive silently along. The Berlin Wall was just a picket fence compared to the wall between us. When in trouble, remain mum, that's the rule. I learned this from the leader of the free world, President Clinton, who is an expert on at least one virtue. But silence is difficult for me. What I'd like to do is talk - argue, plead, say to the man who promised to love me for better or worse (and this is definitely worse) that I made a simple, run-of-the-mill, everyday, garden-variety mistake.
Read MoreA few gold sequins on the front steps. That’s all that remains of her. Everything else was here before she came: A book of children’s rhymes. A box of crayons. A deck of cards. She spilled the sequins her last time…
Read MoreThe child was 3, maybe 4, and walking hand in hand with his mother down Charles Street on a beautiful August day. Boston Common was to his left, the Public Garden to his right, The Four Seasons Hotel ahead and the State House behind. The sky was blue, the sun bright and every tree in the city was in bloom. The people were in bloom, too, little kids, big kids, tourists and natives, colorful in their shorts and baseball hats, suits and sundresses. The streets teemed with cars and trucks, bikes and bikers, busses and trolleys and in the distance, there were even more buildings and people and things. It was a page right out of "Where's Waldo."
Read MoreYou look at her and see a child still, because that's what she is, a slim, pretty girl in a T-shirt and jeans, 12 and in no hurry to be 13. “I don't want to grow up,” she tells me as she's beating me at Spit, a card game I have yet to win. “I like being a kid.”
“You'll like being an adult, too, I promise. It comes with some tremendous perks. You get to pick out all the food at the grocery…
Read MoreWhen I asked the priest to pray for Beth's mother and he said, "What's her name?" I answered, "Mrs. O'Connor."
Her first name, Mary, didn't come to me until hours later because, it's "my mother" that Beth always calls her.
"My mother's on the other line. Can I call you back?"
"My mother and father are here. My mother's staying a few days. "
"The twins are with my mother."
Read MoreShe had a chart in her room and was marking off days. I had a chart in my head and was doing the same. Then Sunday finally arrived. Xena didn't pack much for her summer at my house. She didn't need much - just shorts, jeans, a few T-shirts, a book, writing paper, some craft things. She set up camp in my daughter's old room. Then she was beside me talking about her friends Elspie and Amaran and schoo…
Read MoreHe writes things that he would never say in person. Not that they're intimate things. They're not. They're brief statements that come right to the point.
But his written words are different from his spoken ones. He writes from a place he seems to go to only in print, a room he has kept under lock and key for so long that it's only with pen in hand or with a keyboard in front of him that he can enter.
Read MoreTheir images come to me by day and by night. I'll look in the mirror and see not me in the deep plum dress that I will wear at my daughter's wedding, but my own mother in the teal blue dress that she wore at mine. Sometimes I see the three of them: my mother, my aunt and my mother-in-law. My own holy trinity. They were the three women who loved me and mothered me and were there for me, one or the other, or all of them together, for too short a while a very long time ago…
Read MoreIt's noon and it's raining and the dog wants to go for a walk, but I do not.
I tell her I'm not going. "No walk today, girl. It's too awful outside."
But she will have none of this. She's pacing and prancing and moaning and groaning and all but pointing to the ticking clock in the front hall. It has just chimed, one, two, all the way to 12 and Molly, who doesn't know what "Get off the couch this instant" means and who can't even process the one-syllable word down, knows exactly what time it is.
Read MoreMy mother used to sing. Every morning I'd come downstairs and there she'd be standing at the kitchen sink, singing some tune, even if it were winter and dark and the coffee hadn't yet perked. She'd hum as she put on her makeup and sing softly as she dressed, and in the car she would always turn up the radio and sing along with Peggy Lee. She cleaned the house to music, the record player at full volume, as she belted out tunes from "Gypsy" or "Annie Get Your Gun."
Read More
ABOUT COLUMNS ARCHIVES WHAT’S ON MY MIND GALLERY IT’S NEVER TOO LATE BOOKS CONTACT
Copyright © 2020 Beverly Beckham
Web Design by: SKILLARA | Marketing + Media
