I wasn’t with Lucy when she got her longed-for curly hair. Her mother took her to the appointment — which lasted for hours — where Lucy’s hair was washed and combed and cut, then set in rollers and squirted with solution. Then there was sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting, then more solution and more waiting, and washing and conditioning and drying.
Read MoreWhen my granddaughter Lucy, who has Down syndrome, was born almost 13 years ago, only my daughter's friend, Kerry, without missing a beat, congratulated us.
Everyone else, including me, was full of sorrow and sighs.
This was before the Internet began spreading good news…
Read MoreIn my head I am graceful, a lithe thing, long arms and legs that are fluid yet firm. A natural dancer.In reality, when I signed up to be part of a flash mob a few years ago, the director, seeing me dance, took me aside and said…
Read MoreRebirth, everywhere. Across the street and down the street. In my front yard and just beyond my backyard. In the ground and above the ground.
Al, my neighbor across the street whose heart stopped beating 230 days ago, turned 80 last Friday. Lazarus, I call him. And he smiles and shakes his head in wonderment and gratitude and turns to his wife, Katherine, and she smiles, too.
Read MoreIt wasn’t a metaphor at first. It was just a ball of yarn. I took a picture of it, though. A close-up. I set it on my daughter’s pull out couch and clicked away intending to keep it as a reminder that perseverance pays off…
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.
Read More'What I wish is that I could do all the things I used to hate to do - cut the grass, wait in line."
That's what he said. And that's what I've thought about since Thursday night when he said it.
The young man was on "48 Hours," a boy from Milford who caught a wave on Martha's Vineyard the wrong way last Labor Day weekend and is now a paraplegic. "48 Hours" filmed his long, slow days of recovery and therapy and adjustment. It was a superb documentary because it didn't gloss over pain.
Read MoreEvery afternoon she races in from school, raids the refrigerator, then heads for the piano.
"So how was your day?" I shout over Jimmy crack corn and I don't care.
"Fine," she answers, distracted, immediately lost in the notes of a song she has been drumming on her desk and rehearsing in her head throughout the day.
Read MoreThere is something burning in my office. I smell it. Wires. Computer chips. Something electrical.
This is Day 3 of Trying To Get The Printer To Print. It's supposed to be a simple thing. Plug it in. Turn it on. Feed it some paper. Tell it what to print and sit back and relax.
This is not what has been happening.
Read MoreShe was drawn into it. She was the moth, and it was the flame. It warmed and burned and consumed and ignited her.
It became her passion and her cross.
Another woman's words. Another woman's life. Lived 50 years ago, half a world away. A stranger, yet kin.
As we all are.
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