“The moon is slowly drifting away from us.”
I am at my desk reading this in “Interesting Facts,” an e-mail that pops up in my news feed every morning. I’m a sucker for interesting facts. I copy and paste the best of them into my notes because as interesting as a fact may be (100 lightning strikes hit the Earth’s surface every second!), I forget it minutes after I’ve sworn I’ll remember it forever.
Read MoreWhen we were kids, I was jealous because Janet Butler’s birthday came three weeks before mine. It was a big deal back then, growing older, growing closer to what we called “grown up.”
Janet, who was born on Jan. 29, lorded it over me when she was 9 and I was still 8, when she was 10 and I was still 9, when she turned 13 and I was still 12. “Baby,” she’d say, but not in a mean way. She was never mean. She was a tease. She was funny. She’d sing-song the word “baby” and then laugh.
Read MoreHe was a boy when I knew him, a friend of my son’s, 14 or 15 the first time he knocked on our door. I don’t remember the day or even the season, the days and seasons so much the same back then, teens in different shapes and sizes always at the door, knocking or ringing the bell. I can picture him clearly, though, as if it weren’t 40 years ago that he came calling, as if the boy he used to be had stood in my kitchen just yesterday.
He had a mop of dark, shiny curls. Big brown eyes with a shine of their of own. A shy, sweet grin. And a solidness, a compactness that made him seem sturdy, even older at times. Mike Ippolito. He was funny and shy and polite and indiscriminately kind. For me, he is frozen this way in time.
Read MoreShe counts among the people I could call at three in the morning, a surprising fact even to me, because I don’t call her, not even at three in the afternoon. We haven’t talked in five, maybe 10 years.
And yet.
Read MoreA man died suddenly on February 25th. His name was George Thomas IV. He was 38, married, the father of two boys who are 5 and 3, and a baby daughter who is due in August. It was early evening. He was working out in his basement. And he collapsed. His wife, Marissa, found him.
Read MoreSometimes, when I am trying to cross the street in front of my house, I count the cars that whiz past. Forty-eight is my all-time high. Mostly it’s about 30 before someone lets me cross. I live on what used to be a country road but is now a busy cut-through. By the time I get from my front yard to the sidewalk across the street, I’m generally sour on the human race. That’s one reality. Here is another…
Read MoreIt’s taken me 10 years and three grandchildren to finally get it. A man leaves his parents and his wife becomes his focus. Sons grow up, meet girls, get married and voila, a couple is formed. And like it or not, when this happens the rules change…
Read MoreThe names are separated on opposite pages in an old Hallmark datebook, the kind that card stores used to give away. The girls are listed on the left…
Read MoreI was there when it arrived — Kismet? Coincidence? — visiting my old best friend, whom I hadn't seen in years. She had ordered it before she knew I was coming, a "Dorothy" tree she called it, homage to my mother, whose name was Dorothy.
My visit was all impulse. I met Rosemary in second grade. Throughout grade school we were inseparable. Then, little by little, we grew apart…
Read MoreThe room looks like a private lounge at an airport. Nice carpet, good lighting, soft chairs, bright, colorful paintings, magazines and books, coffee and cookies. The dozen men who sit here, all neatly dressed, look typical. They talk. They laugh. They listen. They look as if they are discussing sports or politics or pubs in Dublin.They are, in fact, discussing cancer. Their cancer…
Read MoreI have known for months that she is moving. Late October, early November, that's what she told me all spring and all summer long. She's been fine with it. And I've been fine. Still, when November dawned and there was a moving truck in her driveway across the street and movers carrying out boxes of her things, my heart felt like…
Read MoreI can't attend his funeral. I'll be out of town, 3,000 miles away. It doesn't matter, I suppose. The truth is, I hardly knew him.
And yet I knew him once. We were children together. We lived in the same Randolph neighborhood, went to the same church, waited at the same bus stop every morning and sat under the same roof, though not always in the same classroom, for four long years, because the years are long when you're 7 and 8 and 9 and 10.
Read MoreI don't know Kyle Gendron, except socially. We say hello at functions, make small talk, and now and then, I post on his Facebook page "Wow!" and "Amazing!" because he is such a superb photographer.
When I e-mail him sometimes for advice about photography, he always e-mails back.
Read Moret's young love that songwriters go on about and that filmmakers explore, young love that propels poetry and novels and myths and fairy tales. Romeo and Juliet. Antony and Cleopatra. Lancelot and Guinevere. Jack and Rose (Remember ``Titanic''?). And, of course, today's most popular young couple, “Twilight’s” Edward and Bella.
Young love, just out of the gate with its longings…
Read MorePlanting bulbs is an act of faith. You dig holes, take some dry, scaly ugly things out of a paper bag, place them right side up in the holes, cover them with dirt, watch rain and snow and ice entomb them. And you wait and wait and wait, believing they will transform themselves into things of beauty. When I was a kid, one of my favorite ``Superman'' episodes - the old black-and-white half-hour show starring George Reeves - showed the Man of Steel holding a piece of coal in his hand and squeezing it, turning the coal, in seconds, into a diamond. That's what the Earth does, Superman explained, only it takes the Earth a million years. This was magic to me…
Read MoreJohn never bought her a Valentine card. He surprised her on only one birthday. And every December, he insisted they wait until it was nearly Christmas to put up the tree because Advent, for him, was a time of preparation, not celebration. He was like that. Pragmatic. Prudent. Practical.
Read MoreHe was a priest in his fifties and she was a child in my arms, and he embraced her from the first time he met her. Father David Ziomek loved Lucy from the get-go.
He called her "my friend Lucy" and looked deep into her eyes. And, always, always, she smiled into his.
Read MoreI should have called her when I heard she was sick.
But I didn't. The telephone wasn't part of our friendship, unless we were in each other's neighborhood. Then we'd dial up and say, "I'm here." And drop what we were doing and get together.
Read MoreMy friend Rosemary is moving, packing up and downsizing. It's the American way. You scrimp and save to buy a house, spend a lifetime scraping and scrubbing, replacing and renovating, decorating and landscaping - and then you sell it. I wanted to say goodbye to Rosemary's big old house, stand in the foyer one last time, and breathe in the smells of old wood and new books and whatever was brewing in the kitchen. So I called and asked, "Can I come over?" But Rose said, "No. Richard and I are still packing."
Read MoreI met Al first. He was the one I watched from my window, washing his car, sweeping the driveway, cleaning the gutters, mowing and raking and shoveling. He was the one walking his big black dog, Dante, carrying in the groceries and taking out the trash, waving and smiling and talking to everyone along the way. He used to watch my dog, Molly, when my husband and I were out of town…
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