It was dark at 6 o'clock Saturday morning, dark and silent. Everyone was somewhere else - the kids in their own places, my husband on a business trip, even the dog in another room. The labored drone of the furnace was the only sound. I got up ahead of the day, before the sun, the REAL Saturday morning more than an hour away.

It's a comic's routine, the ultimate "by the way." Insert the stunning headline into the middle of some ordinary news and hope people don't notice. "How was your day, honey?" "Oh fine. I walked the dog. Cleaned the house. Killed your mother. Picked up the laundry."

People magazine arrived Monday with a cover over its cover. "Special Offer for People Subscribers," it said. "Life is complicated. Simplify . . . Preview 'Real Simple' Free. The new magazine filled with easy and beautiful ways to balance life, home, body and soul." I will, of course, send away for my preview issue because doing this is real simple. Just pop out the perforated card…

What's awesome about Florence Kershaw, born 100 years ago yesterday, isn't that she has lived an entire century or that she's in good health or that she has met three presidents or that she golfed right up until she was 92. What's awesome is…

Diane Moynihan mailed the letter last Thursday. On Friday the phone began to ring. By Saturday people were lined up at her door. The letter wasn't easy to write. "Dear Customers and Friends," Moynihan began. "It has been with true pleasure and pride that my family and I have been able to serve you these last 64 years . . . It is with mixed emotion that we announce the time has come to close the Foxboro Hat Shop." The Foxboro Hat Shop has been a place out of time…

I wanted it to last a little longer. Not the hoopla that was the holiday but the lazy aftermath - the kids home, the tree still up, all the beds filled, shoes on the floor, coats on the backs of chairs. There was grilled cheese every day, take-out every night, Christmas cookies still in tins, cocoa, fudge, and no thought of a diet. There was also no no timetable, no agenda, no place you HAD to be. We watched movies - "28 Days," "Affliction," "The General's Daughter. We piled on the couch every night at 9 or 10, it didn't matter because there was no need to get up before dawn. We slept in…

It begins with a wish: I wish I still believed in Santa Claus. It begins when you're a kid and your mother sits you down and tells you that what you've begun to suspect is true. And part of you is validated by her words; you feel grown up, you're in on the secret. But part of you wishes you didn't know, wishes you could have stayed…

In the church calendar, the days leading up to Christmas aren't about shopping and decorating and sending Christmas cards. They're about waiting for the holy birth. They're about taking time for prayer and reflection and acts of kindness.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."

Yes, well, something like that, the Son of God and the holy birth are not really paramount on the minds of many because, let's face it, the holy birth isn't in the fliers or on the ads on TV. The holy birth is relegated to Sundays and Christmas carols. "Away in a Manger," and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Isn't that right?

knew that I would find gold in the old cassettes, which I used to keep in my desk drawer. I saved them for a reason. I moved them from the desk to a cabinet 15 years ago, securing them with elastic, taping a note to the bunch: "Listen before throwing away." I expected to hear among the interviews I taped, the sound of…

They come and go across an ocean, which for centuries separated people. They talk on wireless phones that weren't even a dream until a few decades ago. They write e-mails that traverse the world in seconds….