There are no feelings of doom and gloom in the sprawling ranch in Walpole where Debbie and Mark Bernabei live with their two sons, Nicky and Brett. No "Woe is me," or "Why us?" There is instead the sound of Brett's laughter, cartoons on TV, rays of sunlight pouring in from huge windows, photographs of the boys at different ages on the walls and on the bookshelves and flowers, or the feel of them, in every room…
Read MoreNestor "Tito" Herrera should be outside playing in the snow today, trudging through it on his way to school, making snowballs, laughing with friends, his cheeks rosy, his smile bright, his tiny corner of the world a fine place for an 11-year-old boy to be. Instead Tito Herrera is dead, his small body in a coffin on its way back to Puerto Rico, stabbed by another 11-year-old at a movie theater Saturday after a matinee…
Read MoreYou wonder exactly what combination of words is used to get a woman to agree to give birth on national television. Something like: "We'll stick with soft lighting. We'll shoot you from your best side," or: "No, no, no, you are definitely not fat and swollen. You have never looked lovelier." Could it be a rush of hormones that overloads the natural circuitry of the brain, that makes a woman actually nod and smile and say: "Sure! Why not film the birth?
Read MoreColumnists write stories, sometimes their own, sometimes someone else's. A story may inform, persuade or entertain. It's that simple. Columnists have a point of view, which they are obligated to pass on to the reader. Reporters, on the other hand, are obligated to stick to the facts, who, what, where, when, why. News stories are supposed to be unbiased.
Read MoreThe pretty young woman hobbling out of her apartment, struggling with her crutches and the heavy glass door, put it all in perspective. She was tall, thin and fair with curly brown hair, long legs and her two feet in blue cushioned toeless things that people wear after surgery. She was having a hard time walking, the crutches and the feet things new, the sidewalk slick, the morning cold. I assumed she was a dancer and that tight toe shoes and high-heeled tap shoes were the reason behind whatever had happened to her feet.
Read MoreWhen my son was small and it was winter, we would go for walks in the woods. And he would stretch his legs and take giant steps to walk in my footsteps, the imprint of his boot always swallowed up by mine. It was the same thing with snow angels. I'd make one and he'd make one and there they'd be, side by side. But then he'd…
Read MoreThey are called "audio systems" now, micro component systems or mini component systems or full-size systems with separate components. Micro is small. Mini is bigger. Full size is the biggest. Boom boxes, portable things that people take to the beach, are neither micro nor mini, (though they're smaller than both) and are sold in a separate department, next to water-resistant sports Walkmen and clock radios. All I wanted was a small stereo for a friend who's in a hospital. Something with an off-on button, a tape deck and a three-disc CD player. Something that a nurse or a nurse's aide wouldn't have to call maintenance to use. On. Off. AM. FM. Simple? Hardly.
Read MoreI've been reading Harry Potter slowly, not because it isn't good, but because it is. Because it isn't just one great, compelling, I-can't-put-this-down story, but a series of great stories, each chapter a complete tale. It's nice not to rush through the words. It's fun just to read. Fun? It's a kid's word isn't it? Adults don't have fun. They have weekends off. They take vacations. They go to movies. They walk, run, ski, read biographies. "Was it fun?" That's not what we ask each other. We say, "How was the movie? The snow? The weekend? Did you have a good time?"
Read MoreGrief counselors came to Kerri Sullivan's school this week. Nearly a dozen adults, trained to listen, comfort and affirm, appeared at West Bridgewater Middle-Senior High School to help kids just beginning to live their lives deal with the sudden death of one of their own. Kerri, 13, died Monday morning on her way home from basketball practice. She was a passenger in a mini-van driven by her best friend's mother. The van skidded in snow and hit a tree. Kerri, who had unbuckled her seat belt seconds before to let another girl out of the van, was hurled forward and killed. "She had her seat belt on the whole time. When they dropped the girl off, she went to switch seats. It was that split second," her aunt, Shirley Sullivan, said.
Read MoreIt 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.
Read MoreIt'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."
Read MoreI had no intention of walking her Tuesday. It was cold. It was snowing. And I hadn't walked her for months. My fault for not making time for her. "Not now, Molly. Not now," I said so often that Molly the Lab gave up on me. We walked every day at noon for so many years that I thought we would always walk. The clock in the front hall would chime and Molly would…
Read MorePeople 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…
Read MoreWhat'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…
Read MoreDiane 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…
Read MoreI 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…
Read MoreIt 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…
Read MoreIn 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?
Read Moreknew 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…
Read MoreI met Bob Cormier in the fall of '81, nearly 20 years ago. Hard to believe. I drove to his house in Leominster to interview him, not knowing how to interview, winging it, freelancing for The Patriot Ledger, but what did I know? I wasn't a real writer. Bob Cormier was. I'd spent the summer reading his books, one right after the other, while my kids played, while my husband drove, while whatever was cooking on the stove burned. I loved his work. Could I come and talk to him? I wrote.
He answered on the thin, shiny, erasable bond paper that I will always associate with him. "I'd be happy to meet you and talk and be interviewed. I write at home. My telephone number is" and there it was.
He was that accessible.
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