She is always teaching me something. The other day it was a word.
"I was leaning against the lintel," she said.
Lintel? What's a lintel?
"It's the molding around a door. The beam that supports it."
My 82-year-old mother-in-law knows so much. But not just about words and facts and things you can learn in books; she knows about life.
Read MoreAll it takes is an accusation. "He did it," someone says, and he did it. That's it. End of story. He can deny doing it. He can say, "It never happened. It wasn't like that. Let me tell you my side." But no one will listen. He's this century's witch. Once someone points a finger, once someone even hints, he's guilty as charged…
Read MoreI am sitting in the car, in the passenger seat. My daughter, the 16-year-old, is behind the wheel. She is learning to drive, and I am teaching her, telling her when to speed up, to slow down, to move a little to the left, to be careful of the ice on the road.
I hardly breathe while she drives. I keep my foot poised on an invisible brake. I see a child next to me, a little girl far too young to be driving a car.
My hands are fists as we travel down Dedham Street.
Read MoreThey come and they go - the murdered and the murderers. They fill the front page for a day or two. They lead the nightly news. And then they disappear.
The next day brings different faces, but the same story, the same tragedies.
You think, at the time, I will remember this one. I will remember Kimberly Ray Harbor and Charles Serjeant and Melissa Benoit and Robyn Dabrowski for the rest of my life.
Read MoreI always get the story wrong. No matter how many times I hear it I confuse the details. Was he wearing the sweater with the reindeer the night they met? Or was she? Was it September or October 1947 or 1948?
It was Sept. 5, 1947. He was wearing the reindeer sweater. She was wearing a red Sheltie Mist sweater, white bucks and a camel-hair skirt that swirled every time she swayed. I know because I can see her legs, long and shapely. Incredible, unforgettable legs. That's what Joe said the first time he told me the story and that's what he always says, every time he relates it.
"She had great legs" and "she was absolutely beautiful."
Read MoreFor years, I would tuck her in every night and sing a little song I made up: "Stay little. Stay little. Little, little stay. Little stay. Little stay little." Even before she understood, I sang these words to her.
But long after there was any need to tuck her in, when she was quite capable of getting into bed herself, I continued with the ritual and the song. It was dumb, I know, but it was a tradition and it was all ours.
Read MoreOK, all you professional communicators out there - television anchors and personalities, reporters, columnists, entertainers, satirists, humorists, big shots and little shots alike - raise your right hand and repeat after me:
"I will lay off Chelsea Clinton for the next four years. I will not say or write or even intimate anything negative about her. I will not undermine her, ridicule her or go for a laugh at her expense, either in print or on film.
"I will treat her as if she were my 12-year-old daughter, tenderly, aware that 12 is a tough age to be and that 13 isn't much better, and 14 and 15 are no prizes either, and even an unintentional comment, even a pair of seemingly harmless words such as `frizzy hair' can make a young girl sob and inflict a wound that hurts for a lifetime."
Read MoreThis is what we want from Bill Clinton: We want him to turn the country around, to heal the wounds and bridge the divisions and make us all one nation under God again.
We want him to fix the economy, clean up our cities, put an end to crime, banish illegal drugs, reduce unemployment, repair our schools, invest in education, build affordable housing, find a cure for AIDS, create a universal health-care system, secure nuclear wastes, refurbish our highways, reduce pollution, be fair to Haitians, stand tough with Saddam Hussein, deal with Somalia and talk sense to the Serbs.
Read MoreA little house-cleaning before the new year begins. Way back in September, I wrote a what-do-you-think column. Who, I asked, has made the greatest contribution to the 20th century?
People I had already spoken with had mentioned Gandhi, Pope John XXIII, John Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jonas Salk, Henry Ford, Mother Teresa, and Albert Schweitzer. I gave my vote to Walt Disney. But I wanted to know what you thought, and I asked you to write. And you did.
Read MoreYou read the statistics and look around and count the number of couples who are no longer couples, who live miles apart or in the same house, who pledged to love one another but are now indifferent strangers, and you know there is no happily ever after.
But you believe in it anyway. A lifetime of love songs and fairy tales can't be undone by other people's unhappy lives.
"It'll be different for us." That's what every bride tells herself as she walks down the aisle. "Our marriage will always be loving and romantic and ideal."
Read MoreMy friend Anne's daughter died of cystic fibrosis eight-and-a-half years ago. Amy was 11, in the sixth grade, and my daughter Lauren's best friend. We knew Amy was going to die, everyone knew, but we knew it intellectually the way we know that someday we'll grow old, and someday babies not even born yet will have gray hair. We didn't believe it, couldn't imagine it. Someday was theory. Amy's death was an eternity away…
Read More"Is he still handsome?" That's what people always ask. That and "How old is he?" and "Can he still sing?" and "Is he really as nice as he seems?"
Yes, he's handsome. He has thick gray hair, twinkley eyes, a great smile and a younger man's trim build.
How old is he? He's 30-50, my sister-in-law would say. Eighty is how the world translates it. But the number deceives.
Read MoreYves Alexandre writes simply and truthfully; I do not want to change her words. I want to repeat them because they beg to be heard; but I have to compress them because of space.
The 17-year-old student at Somerville High wrote her story for the September issue of the 21st Century, a newspaper published in Newton, written entirely by teens. Alexandre's story is compelling, a disturbing first person account of racism.
Read MoreNo except here. Just a well-I-was-really-off-the-mark-with-this-prediction! The anything goes era continues.
Read MoreI phoned her the other day to ask how her pregnancy is coming along.
"I'll be glad when it's over," she said in a weary voice. "I'm a nervous wreck. There are so many things that can go wrong. I can't wait for this baby to be born."
My friend is having her second child, but this is her third pregnancy. A year ago she miscarried, so all during the early weeks of this pregnancy the possibility that she might again miscarry kept her joy on hold.
Read MoreThis isn't what you want to read on a Sunday morning, or on any morning. It's yet another horror story about suffering people thousands of miles away. We don't want to know about any more suffering people. We've got enough problems: not enough money to make ends meet; not enough jobs to go around.
Cities exploding. Hope imploding. Locked doors in the house, even when you're home. Locked doors in the car, even when you drive. No stopping to help anyone; no looking around. People weird, ready to attack. Trouble in the schools; trouble in the streets; homes aren't havens; church doors are locked; Cancer, AIDS, hurricanes. We don't need more problems!
Read Moret shouldn't have happened. This is an unarguable fact. Julie Tobin, of West Roxbury, should be alive, not dead.
She was killed on Sept. 6, 1987. The 17-year-old had spent the afternoon at a family reunion of a friend held at Norwood Country Club. Shortly after midnight, she left the reunion on foot and was standing in the breakdown lane of Route 1 talking to some friends in a van when she suddenly ran around the front of the van and onto the road. She was hit by a car and died the next day.
Read MoreIt began with a sign - not a spiritual one, but a billboard. At least that's how I think it began. The billboard was at Disney World, and it asked visitors to consider who they believe had made the greatest contribution to the 20th Century.
Maybe the wording was different. Maybe it was vote for the man of the century. I don't remember. But I found myself mulling over the question, then posing it to everyone I knew.
Read MoreSo now all of a sudden it's Mia who's the bad guy, Mia who has all the problems, Mia who's to blame for the Woody/Mia/Soon-Yi triangle.
This seems to be the latest theory. Why would anynormal woman adopt so many children? Why would any normal woman adopt children with handicaps? Mia Farrow cannot possibly be drawn to these chilren. She cannot possibly enjoy her huge brood. It has to be an act.
Therefore she cannot be what she appears to be.
Read MoreThey don't want to believe it. Or if they believe it, they want to forget.
"Why do you have to keep bringing this up? Why do you continually talk about it? It does no good. It's over. It's in the past. Why can't you just get on with your life?"
They don't understand why at birthdays and holidays and christenings and baptisms, she continues to arrive late - after he's gone. They don't understand why she refuses his gifts, why she's still in therapy, why she has night sweats. They don't understand why sometimes in the middle of the day, when it all comes back to her, she sits and sobs.
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