A street sign shows the way

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A street sign shows the way

The intellect arches its eyebrows, denies it, demeans it. The intellect says, What? Are you serious? The dead do not speak. The dead are dead.

But the intellect is wrong.

I am driving to Bridgewater State University, a sprawling Massachusetts school, which was a small college when I went there. I am meeting my bonus grandson, my youngest daughter’s partner’s son, who is a sophomore majoring in criminal justice. The last time I saw Matt in person, at Christmas, he offered to show me around the now sprawling campus. We made plans to meet at two o’clock in the parking lot near his dorm on the last Friday in January. The morning of our meeting, he texted, “Message me when you get here.”

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Let's talk turkey!

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Let's talk turkey!

At first I thought, Wow. Look at this! I’m being greeted by two, clearly excited to see me, plucked from central casting turkeys clucking at my passenger door.

“Hey, guys!” I said, grabbing my purse and a gift bag holding a bottle of nice chardonnay. I got out of my car at Dedham Plaza and walked smiling toward my feathered friends. “What are you doing in a parking lot? You’ll get yourselves killed. You need to be careful.”

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Dancing down Memory Lane rouses the power of love

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Dancing down Memory Lane rouses the power of love

Chris paved the way. I didn’t know this when he was alive, how one human being would alter us, how one human being would show us a world we might have looked away from had we not known him.

This dawned on me as I sat with my family at the wedding of Chris’s grandnephew a few weeks ago. And this realization has stayed with me, that Chris McLean didn’t change just my family and me. He opened the eyes of everyone who knew him. And then everyone who knew him opened even more eyes.

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Lesson learned: Don’t draw conclusions until you give it a try

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Lesson learned: Don’t draw conclusions until you give it a try

I tell people all the time that I can’t draw, can’t paint, that I am not an artist. If they are at my house, I show the disbelievers proof: a sketch of a bird I drew years ago during a game of Pictionary.

My friend Anne rescued the sketch from the trash (after everyone stopped laughing), had it framed, and gave it to me one Christmas. It hangs in my office as a reminder to never play Pictionary again. I shake my head every time I look at it.

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When should you call a doctor? Who stole my waist? And other questions we older folks want answered

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When should you call a doctor? Who stole my waist? And other questions we older folks want answered

I had an epiphany last week. I looked in the bathroom mirror and realized that I couldn’t see my face clearly until I put on my reading glasses. Which led me to wonder: How do you put on makeup while wearing glasses? Lots of people must do this because lots of people wear glasses. But how? And is it normal to wake up one day and suddenly not be able to see your face in the mirror? What else am I not seeing? And what else, dear God, is next?

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Finding common ground by looking up at the sky

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Finding common ground by looking up at the sky

It’s a week old, ancient history in today’s fast-paced, frantically frenetic world. And it’s superfluous, too. What’s a rainbow anyway but the sun’s rays distilled into colorful arcs? Nothing magical or newsworthy about this. It’s science. It happens. And yet, Saturday’s rainbow must have worked some magic because it cast a spell. “Go outside and look up at the sky,” my daughter texted. “There’s the most beautiful rainbow.”

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If only we could reshuffle the days of our lives

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If only we could reshuffle the days of our lives

Random is what I would choose. If I could choose.

Life no longer sequential. Instead, all of our days would be shuffled like songs on a CD played out of order. No order. No growing up. No growing old. Imagine? Random. You wake up on a Monday and you’re 23 years old and there’s not a wrinkle on your face. Lying next to you is your spouse who is years younger than your adult son, whom you saw just the day before when you woke up and were 70…

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Wonderful Memories, Just Beyond Reach

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Wonderful Memories, Just Beyond Reach

If only you could wrap up a few happy moments and give them back to people when they are in need of happiness. If only you could freeze the best of times the way you freeze fresh-picked blueberries in June to savor again on a December day. We have memory, yes. But memory is a tease, a still shot, a small picture of what was, not all of what was. It’s a blueberry pie on the cover of a gourmet magazine, beautiful to look at but tormenting, too…

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Little white lies, with love

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Sometimes we lie to spare ourselves. Sometimes we lie to spare others. I like the sparing others lie.

Decades ago, when my husband was in Arizona with his work buddies, on a reward trip, a building-partnership trip, a "get out of Dodge it's winter here and perpetual summer there" trip, he called home the first night and announced, "It's raining."

"It's raining?" I said back. It hardly ever rains in Phoenix. Nearly 300 days of sun and only 20 days of any kind of precipitation, boasts the Chamber of Commerce.

"It's just a fluke. I'm sure the sun will be shining by tomorrow," my husband said confidently.

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Show respect for the ones you love

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I took it out on him, the person I love most. We do this sometimes. It was over the silliest thing: wreath hangers that went missing.

"Did you move those wreath hangers that were in Julie's room?" he asked, poking his head into my office. "I thought I left them there." I should have stopped what I was doing right then. Got up from my chair and helped him. If a friend had lost something, if a stranger had knocked on my door and said, "I had wreath hangers tied to the Christmas tree I have on my roof and they must have come undone because they're not there now," I would have put on my shoes, grabbed my coat, and joined him in his search…

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The big picture? Better to resize it!

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The big picture? Better to resize it!

It's perennial wisdom, the stuff of graduation cards and a top contender on lists of ``best advice.'' You have to look at the big picture. This is what we tell our kids and it's what responsible adults told us. The big picture is the Holy Grail. To be a success, you have to know where you are going and you have to have a plan. ``Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.'' I have always loved this analogy. But the truth is I find the big picture - from the simplest question asked of a child, ``What do you want to be when you grow up?'' to the most complex asked years later, ``What's it's all about, Alfie?'' - overwhelming…

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Songs: They're the key to life

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Songs: They're the key to life

I had an idea a while ago about writing a book called ``Everything I Know I Learned from My Garden,'' full of pithy if not original insights. Growth can't be rushed, for one, or maturity counts, and it really does matter where you're planted. I scribbled some notes, but got predictably sidetracked. Then winter came and my garden died. (I know: It's not really dead. Which is another life lesson: Things are not always what they seem.) Still, I abandoned the project…

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After other flowers fade, marigolds seen in a new light

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After other flowers fade, marigolds seen in a new light

They're intrepid little flowers, dancing in the snow, lovely things - these orange and yellow marigolds that I have disparaged my whole life. They are the last to leave the party, a sudden standout because they stand alone.

The violet charm clematis that grew tall and leggy behind them; the blood red dahlias that dazzled beside them; the pinks and the plums and the purples that swayed and sashayed their way through June, July, and August, outshining them every day - did not outlast them. They have all vanished now like Cinderella's coach and gown. The clock struck, and they withered…

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Finding faith in the garden

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Finding faith in the garden

I am putting the garden to bed. Raking leaves. Cutting back shrubs. Pulling out yellow loosestrife. Trimming. Thinning. Transplanting. Digging up dahlias and drying them off and storing them in the cellar in paper bags. Emptying ceramic pots and lugging them to the cellar, too, so they don't crack in the cold. I am puttering and pruning and planting. Katherine, my friend across the street, finished all these things weeks ago. She has already planted red and yellow tulips for next spring. She has already fertilized her grass. She has even grown new grass…

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A daughter's lesson shines a light

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A daughter's lesson shines a light

My daughter, Lauren, is always teaching me something.

When she was an infant and colicky and inconsolable, she taught me that sunshine really does follow rain. Because once the colic passed, there she was, all sweetness and smiles, a happy baby, a happy toddler, a happy child. When she was in first grade, she taught me to pay more attention to time, because there she was, suddenly, climbing onto the school bus, a little girl with two long ponytails, the baby she'd been so soon gone.

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