I cut her some slack, the not-so-young woman who gave me the finger and mouthed the companion epithet. I thought, OK, maybe she's from another country and doesn't know the rule about funeral processions having the right of way. Maybe this cortege of cars with headlights on in the middle of a sunny day, funeral flags on each roof, was a new experience for her.
Read MoreI know that if I looked in the plastic storage box under the bed, I'd find Valentine's Day cards I sent to my husband when we were first married. I must have sent him valentines in the beginning.I sent him all kinds of cards back then: "Missing you," "Thinking of you," "There's no one like you."It didn't matter that his birthday was the day before Valentine's Day and that his birthday card and Valentine's Day card would say the same thing.
Read MoreLyllian doesn't know what day it is or how old she is or if her daughter has been in to visit, even if her daughter has just left the room. She is in her 90s and lives in a world where time isn't linear and memories aren't sequential, but are like tracks on a CD programmed for random selection.
Read MoreI spoke - or wrote - too soon. Sunday I praised Amtrak. Today I have to eat my words. Sunday I said my ride to New York late last week was convenient and comfortable and quick. Today I report that my ride back from New York Sunday evening was none of the above. I should have known we were in trouble when we didn't pull out of Penn Station at 4:55 p.m. as scheduled, but started heading south instead. Seems there was a stalled train on our track so we had to take another track. No problem, we'd make up the lost time.
Read MoreABOARD AMTRAK'S ACELA - It's the new train. Well, not really the new train but not the old train, either. Because this new and improved new-old train promises to get me to New York's Penn Station in three hours and 40 minutes, the speed of sound compared to past trips.
Read MoreIt arrived among her Christmas cards, a dunning letter informing Mary Dowd of Somerville that Social Security had made a mistake, and that she, not Social Security, was going to have to pay for this mistake. "We are writing to give you new information about the retirement benefits which you receive," the letter began, "how we paid you $ 7,874 too much in benefits [and] how you can pay us back. You should refund the overpayment within 30 days."
Read MoreOf course I read every word of Boston magazine's cover story, "Do You Need A Facelift?" The question seemed personally addressed to me. I hate the lines on my face and my droopy eyelids and the age spots on my hands and the creeping invisibility that comes with age. And I envy all the women I know who have had surgery. They look young and taut and confident.
Read MoreThe worst thing about the movie "Angela's Ashes" isn't that it's a bad film. That it's too long and grim and plodding and depressing, and that it's an indictment of the Catholic Church in Ireland and the Irish themselves doesn't matter. It's only a movie. It'll be gone from conversation and the big screen in a few weeks and relegated to video stores a few months later.
Read MoreTwo weeks until Valentine's Day and I still have my Christmas decorations up. We're not talking a few decorations, a snowman here and a poinsettia there. We are talking Christmas from head to toe, the creche, the garland, holly, wreaths, the lighted Christmas scene, the collection of Santas. We are talking cards still taped to the walls. Only the fa-la-las are missing.
Read MoreJUPITER, Fla. - At a friend's condo, ten stories above the ground, we are transported from winter to summer. The condo is all glass and balcony, the indoors like the outdoors only with comfortable furniture. Our bedroom faces east. The kitchen faces west. For the four days we are here, we wake up early every morning to watch the sun rise and hurry back each evening to see it set.
Read MoreIn the words of my good friend Anne King, who owns a hair salon, not a baseball team: "It boggles the mind." Derek Jeter, the 25-year-old Yankee shortstop is about to sign a seven-year $ 118.5 million contract and one can only wonder, has this country gone mad? Money doesn't fall from the sky nor does George Steinbrenner have a printing press in his office cranking out whatever he needs to keep his players happy. There's only so much hard cash in this world and when ballplayers get fat, other people - people with real jobs - get taken.
Read MoreI dress with care when I go to see Ann. I stand at the closet door and think about what to put on and try extra hard not to wear black. Ann says I wear too much black. "You need some color," she insists. "You should wear reds and blues and purples."
Read MoreI thought THE LOOK had gone the way of penny candy and flavor straws. "What look?" I expected people to say when I asked about it. But instead there was all this nodding and smiling and instant recognition. "Oh, I know THE LOOK" and "No one could give THE LOOK like my mother." And "You know what? My mother still gives me THE LOOK."
Read MoreGod forbid that Conolrad alert is ever for real. Barely a dusting of snow, and civilization as we know it caved Thursday morning. The ground was hardly wet when traffic skidded to a stop. I think we've all gone soft. I counted four abandoned cars on a four-mile stretch of Interstate 95 before 9 a.m. You could see the white lines on the road, there was that little snow. And you could see for a mile. This was not a whiteout. This was snow, pretty white crystals falling from the sky, not fallout from a nuclear bomb.
Read MoreWhat has happened to shame?
Isn't anyone ashamed anymore? I know embarrassed is still around (see our president). And humiliated (see Peter Blute). And sorry because people (even Jane Swift, finally) are generally sorry when they get caught doing not quite the right thing. (There is, of course, no really wrong thing these days.) As for shame, it's a word so out of use that it will soon have "archaic" next to it in the dictionary. I can imagine a child a few years from now picking up an old book and reading, "He hung his head with shame" and thinking shame must have been some kind of heavy trinket people used to wear in the old days.
Read MoreMichelle and Victor Clerico speak in whispers because sound hurts their son's ears and they touch him gently because pain comes with even the lightest touch. Frankie is 5 and handsome with thick red hair and smooth pale skin and a heart as big as he is small. He tells his parents that when he dies he's going to Heaven and that God is going to give him wings. He tells his little sister: "Don't be sad. When I'm in heaven you won't be able to see me but I'll keep an eye on you."
Read MoreI never lived in Codman Square yet in every sense of the phrase, I grew up there. I was 11 and in the seventh grade, a commuter student at St. Mark's in Dorchester and as lonely as I would ever be. That's when I discovered the square and the library that overlooked it. Every day when the neighborhood kids went home to lunch and the other commuters ate their waxed paper-wrapped sandwiches in the gloomy auditorium, I walked up the hill past Girl's Latin to the Codman Square library.
Read MoreShe humbles me. Here I am racing around trying to the find perfect gift for everyone on my Christmas list, running here and there, running around in circles really, because what exactly is the perfect gift? Dottie Kelly knows. When the first package arrived…
Read MoreHe isn't all that old. And neither am I. That's what I've been telling myself. And I'm right, if I compare myself to Mrs. Lamb, who a few months ago flew from New York City, where she lives, to California to help celebrate her son's 70th birthday.
"Did you dream when you were a little girl playing dolls that you'd ever have a 70-year-old son never mind be around to help him blow out the candles…
Read MoreAs if life weren't fast enough. Here it comes. A giant, speeding runaway locomotive, and what do you know? It's playing "Jingle Bells" and heading right toward us. What's our choice? We can stand our ground and get clobbered by the thing. Or we can take a leap, grab on and become human hood ornaments clinging to umpteen tons of metal and steel barreling along a set of tracks that lead directly to . . . Christmas Day. Some choice. How'd we get here, anyway?
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