It takes a face to change a heart

/

A few days ago, six of us were eating and talking about Rob Portman, the US senator from Ohio who had just announced that after a lifetime of opposing gay marriage, he had changed his mind.

His son had come out, and he had given gay marriage more thought, and I was dissing him for this, not for his change of opinion but for seeing the light only because his son, not someone else's, was gay.

And that's when my friend and teacher John O'Neil made me see the light. "It takes a face to change a heart," he said quietly.

Read More

Sometimes you need to shout

/

Here's what we've all been taught. To be polite. To be quiet. To not make a scene. To go with the flow. To be aware of other people's feelings.

Here's what we teach our children: To acknowledge a person's presence. To look someone in the eye. To say "please" and "thank you." To not interrupt. To say "excuse me." To be respectful.

And it's all good advice. Until it isn't.

Read More

Memo to the kids: Call home

/
Memo to the kids: Call home

It was magical, the old telephone. It rang and you raced to it and picked it up and said ``hello?'' and someone - a friend, a neighbor, sometimes someone far away in another state - said ``hello'' back. And you got excited, hearing a certain voice, thrilled and surprised when it was your best friend calling, or a boy you just met, because the phone ringing was like a knock on a door or a gift-wrapped present. Always a mystery.

It was practical, too. ``I lost my homework page. Can you read me the questions?'' ``Want to go to the movies on Saturday?'' ``My mother said she'd pick us up after play practice tomorrow.'' And bingo, just like that, schedules were confirmed and problems solved.

Read More

In a forgotten photo, a mother's happy face

/
In a forgotten photo, a mother's happy face

I had two mothers. That's what I've long thought.

The first was young and spry and pretty and hip. She sang and she danced and she loved old movies and show tunes and big hats and Johnny Carson.

The other mother was head-injured and infirm. A fall made her old. A fall took away all her prettiness. Before she fell, my mother was one person. After she fell, she was another. I knew both, I loved both, so I thought I knew her.

Read More

After other flowers fade, marigolds seen in a new light

/
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…

Read More

School shopping never grows old

/

Chicago in 1830 was a military post and fur station where wolves prowled the streets at night and only 12 families lived. Just 30 years later, it had grown to a city of 100,000 and hosted the Republican National Convention.

I learned this the other day while listening to a book on tape, ``Team of Rivals'' by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is really all about Abraham Lincoln, but became for me just one more affirmation that change is not endemic to now. Cities grow. Businesses fail. The sand we build our lives on is always shifting. That's life. Nothing stays the same and the world in which we grow up, the world we know, is never the world in which we grow old.

Read More

Counting calories and sins

/

I am sitting at my computer eating reduced-fat potato chips, using them to scoop up tuna fish once packed in water but now swimming in low-fat mayonnaise. And I am feeling smug and Spartan because there is no bread in my lunch, no yummy roll grilled in butter, no slice of white American cheese melted on top. There's 1 percent milk in my coffee and just a single cookie on my plate: my neighbor Katherine's homemade - without butter - almond biscotti. Ah, healthful eating.

Read More

Important things live on in memory

/

My 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 More

In every end, there's a beginning

/
In every end, there's a beginning

I found it in a card shop in Concord, N.H. - Caardvark's, a place that is now closed. It was hanging on a wall and it was perfect.

I'd been looking for perfect. My daughter was newly engaged and I wanted something special to celebrate the moment. For this was my baby who was getting married, my youngest child leaving home not for a little while, not for college, or for a summer, or to test her wings. But to fly away - with someone else - forever.

Read More

Memories, a faraway laugh, in a birthday phone call

/
Memories, a faraway laugh, in a birthday phone call

`It's Janet’s birthday," I tell the person who answers the phone, expecting her to say, "It is? I'm so glad you mentioned this." Or "I know. We're having a little party this afternoon." But she says, "Oh." She says it flat, without inflection, in a way that means "I don't care. What difference does it make? Why are you telling me?"

Read More

House a symbol of what's wrong

/
House a symbol of what's wrong

Beverly Beckham

It sits on top of a hill, overlooking a busy road - a big, pink stucco house that dwarfs all the houses around it. It is conspicuous consumption at its worst, or at its best, depending on your point of view. It's not the biggest house around. There are many bigger - one just a few miles from where I live, perched not on top of a hill but practically on the offramp of a highway. So many smaller houses have been knocked down to make room for these…

Read More

When we compare, we lose

/

I am trying not to compare. Not stuffing. Not apple pie. Not last year with this year. Not table settings. Not houses. Not family rooms or family dynamics. Not anything.

Comparison, I've come to believe, is the eighth deadly sin.

I used to compare myself with Rosemary. We met in second grade. She had straight hair. Mine was curly. She wore skirts and sweaters. I wore frilly dresses. She had her very own kitchen drawer, which was filled with paper, books, paints and crayons. I had to keep my things in a toy box in my room.

Read More

FIND YOURSELF BY LOOKING INSIDE

/

I have it upstairs in a box somewhere, a piece of pink, lined paper filled with writing that's straight up and down. The penmanship struck me as exotic when I first saw it because it wasn't the Palmer Method. It was a combination of printing and art, the f's and g's and p's and q's big and bold and gaudy. The words the letters made were bold, too, because they held up a mirror to my life. This is who you are, the lady who penned them said.

Read More