Seeking a cure for ‘heart fatigue'

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Seeking a cure for ‘heart fatigue'

“Heart fatigue.” That’s how I read it. But it was “Heat fatigue” a friend had written. On Facebook. Her dog had been overheated so she soaked a bath towel with cold water from a hose and draped it over his back. “He seems to really like that,” she wrote, posting a picture of her dog at peace, eyes closed, ears up, sleeping the sleep of the untroubled. I envied the dog. I looked at the towel and wished there were as simple a solution for heart fatigue…

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Still in Love with Dollhouse after All These Years

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Still in Love with Dollhouse after All These Years

All the things I've wanted. Saved for. Had to have. Bought. Loved in my life. Then, one day, abandoned. That's what happens with things. Ginny dolls. Cabbage Patch dolls. Elsa and Anna. All history now, passion turned to indifference, generation after generation after generation.

My first real purchase? I was 12. It was summer. I'd baby-sat for an entire week, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, three kids. I'd earned…

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Xena still a moment to cherish

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Xena still a moment to cherish

I'm surprised she still visits. She said she would. She said, ``When I get my license, I'll be able to drive to your house anytime, Beverly.'' But she was 11, then. And 12. And 13.

``I'll never leave you, Mama,'' I said when I was small. And then I did. It happens.

Xena, the cousin from New York who spent so much of her childhood with me playing Spit, walking, talking and planning her adult life, has had her license for two summers now. And she has visited, just as she promised. She's called and said, ``I miss you. Can I come?'' And then driven two-and-a-half hours, away from her family and her boyfriend and her work and her life, to spend time with me.

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Simple fun and kids enrich life

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When Xena, the cousin I love, was here, before she grew up and met the boyfriend she loves, we would walk from my house all the way downtown, then home again.

She was 11 that summer and couldn't read. And no one had known. She'd buffaloed her teachers and her parents and everyone else. She had listened, observed and pretended to read. It was her fifth-grade teacher who finally realized that she couldn't…

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On life's rocky road, another pebble

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On life's rocky road, another pebble

The backpacks look alike. This is my sole defense. But I don't mention this as we drive silently along. The Berlin Wall was just a picket fence compared to the wall between us. When in trouble, remain mum, that's the rule. I learned this from the leader of the free world, President Clinton, who is an expert on at least one virtue. But silence is difficult for me. What I'd like to do is talk - argue, plead, say to the man who promised to love me for better or worse (and this is definitely worse) that I made a simple, run-of-the-mill, everyday, garden-variety mistake.

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The Lies our Children are Absorbing

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You look at her and see a child still, because that's what she is, a slim, pretty girl in a T-shirt and jeans, 12 and in no hurry to be 13. “I don't want to grow up,” she tells me as she's beating me at Spit, a card game I have yet to win. “I like being a kid.”

“You'll like being an adult, too, I promise. It comes with some tremendous perks. You get to pick out all the food at the grocery…

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Revisiting Summer with a Child

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She had a chart in her room and was marking off days. I had a chart in my head and was doing the same. Then Sunday finally arrived. Xena didn't pack much for her summer at my house. She didn't need much - just shorts, jeans, a few T-shirts, a book, writing paper, some craft things. She set up camp in my daughter's old room. Then she was beside me talking about her friends Elspie and Amaran and schoo…

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Gifts Crafted with Love Do Last

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She made three scarves, one for each of us. Lauren's is white with silver and blue sparkles, Julie's is light purple and mine is dark purple and green. They're not the long, thick variety you can wrap around your neck two or three times and still have enough left over for a flowing tail. They're not fancy scarves, either - no cable stitches or popcorn knots or intricate sewn embroidery on any of them. They are just rectangles of soft yarn knitted…

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The Essence of Life Lies in the Ordinary Miracle of Motherhood

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Three of the children are out in the field with their father when I arrive.

It's a Kodak moment: The girls run with their arms outstretched through spring grass under a cloudless sky, their dog loping along beside them. Tabitha's hair flies behind her like a kite's tail. Xena runs double-speed to keep up. Shiloh, 2 1/2, walks and runs, stopping every few steps to hike up her long, cotton dress…

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Well-behaved kids give back what they take in - respect

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I met them the first time when they walked into my mother-in-law's house with their parents on New Year's Day four years ago.

"My brother's daughter, Jeannie, is coming with her family to visit all the way from New York. Won't you stop by and visit, too?" my mother-in-law phoned to ask.

I bet I groaned about having to visit someone I hardly knew. I bet I complained about all the things I had to do: take down the tree, vacuum up the pine needles, get my life in order, ready the slate for the new year.

I know I went to my mother-in-law's intending to stay just a little while. But that was before I met Jessica, Tabitha and Xena.

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