The night and the music help David fight his fears

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The night and the music help David fight his fears

Depending on how old you are, you'd call him a nerd, a dweeb, a geek. He's the square peg in a world full of round holes. He doesn't walk so much as stumble. He bumps into things. His dialogue, his everyday hellos and goodbyes, are as clumsy as his gait.

His dark curly hair covers his forehead, making him look, at times, like a standard poodle whose groomer has been on vacation too long. His soulful eyes are obscured by horn-rimmed glasses. He's out of shape, a weeble in a room full of Ken dolls.

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Remembering Amy, ever 11

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Remembering Amy, ever 11

I don't know why it felt so important to find the exact spot. She isn't there. I recognize this. And yet it didn't seem enough just to ride around and lump her together with DICKSON and HARRISON and WHITTENBERGER and all the other people I never met. I knew Amy - knew her for too short a time, too long ago. But I knew her well. She was my daughter's best friend; because of her, her mother and I became friends…

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A birthday not celebrated

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A birthday not celebrated

Today is her birthday. She would have been 10. At school they would have sung to her. At home there would have been presents and cake and a party. But she died in June so there is no celebration. In the house not far from Wollaston Beach where Leanne lived with her mother and grandparents, though there are photos of her smiling on the walls and shelves, there are few real smiles anymore. Her absence fills the place. There are no feet pounding up the stairs. No books flung on a chair. No "Mama! Nana! I'm home!" Two women who loved and raised a child are empty without her. They try to put into words their loss, their love and their pain. But words can't hold these things and so as they speak, tears fall…

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New Year's quiz sets guests' memories spinning in reverse

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It was a party game, that's all it was. New Year's Eve, 1994. Our hostess passed out sheets of paper with 10 questions on them. She separated husbands and wives and created new pairs. Let's see how much you remember from 1994, she said. Piece of cake, we all thought. We were a group who knew our news. Lawyers, bankers, teachers, librarians, we devoured newspapers. We watched news shows. We subscribed to Newsweek or Time. Hit us with your toughest question, we thought. We were ready…

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Hand-in-hand, brothers all

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Hand-in-hand, brothers all

A few days before Christmas I saw them walking along the street near the viaduct. It was sunset. The sky was red. The trees were black. There was no sidewalk and no other pedestrians except these two young boys. They were brothers, you could tell. They had the same straight, sandy hair. They wore the same knit stocking caps and the same loose-fitting jackets, only in different sizes, and they walked in the same loping way. One was about 12 and the other 5…

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Women's history day by day

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Women's history day by day

If you're feeling a little overwhelmed because Christmas is four days away and you've been shopping and wrapping and writing cards forever and you still have more to do - stockings to stuff, cookies to bake, more gifts to buy, plus a dinner to plan and cook - take a break. Head to your nearest bookstore and grab a copy of Lois Edgerly's "Women's Words, Women's Stories." You won't have time to read it until after the holiday, of course, but that's OK. It's meant to be read then…

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Two women, one friendship

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I have come to know Julia slowly, a young woman whose husband died of cystic fibrosis a few months before their son Jeffrey was born. After his death, the priest at our parish spoke of Julia's faith and courage. But she was a stranger then. I had no idea she was my mother-in-law’s next door neighbor. It was after that day in church that my mother-in-law began mentioning Julia, but I didn’t connect the dots. I didn’t realize that the priest’s Julia and my mother-in-law’s Julia were one and the same. Because Julia, then, was just a name…

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The rarest doctors treat patients, not disease

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What you want when you or someone you love is sick is a caring human being on the other end of a telephone line. You don't want voice-mail. ("Press your party's extension, now.") You don't want to be put on hold. You don't want to be told that the doctor returns all phone calls after 5:00 p.m. and doesn't have an opening until March 13. You want someone to listen to you, to advise you, to treat you as if you matter…

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Caring friends help prevent a free fall

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Caring friends help prevent a free fall

The pain started last December, but he didn't recognize it as pain. He had a funny feeling in his jaw as he danced and he was breathless. So he stopped dancing and muttered to himself that he was 46 and he was getting old.

It happened two months later, again on a dance floor. This time he registered the discomfort, made the association with dancing and modified his behavior. He gave up dancing and the pain went away.

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We are all to blame for death of Samore

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I'm looking for someone to blame. If I can blame someone or something, then I can put the death of 13-year-old Samore Vassel out of my head and get on with the pretense that life is manageable, and we can keep the wolves from our doors.

Samore Vassel lived in Dorchester with his father and younger brother and sister. Last week he was in Brooklyn, visiting his mother, when he was shot and killed. The boy had told his mother he was going to a movie with a friend. But he and his buddy went off to meet a couple of girls instead.

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Mother Teresa: Her message is love

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Mother Teresa: Her message is love

I think of it as myth, now, as a fairy tale I once believed. Truth has been downsized to fit a package I can carry around with me. The whole truth grew too heavy and cumbersome with age. The whole truth demanded a responsibility I continue to shun.

But I remember the child who accepted the whole truth, the child I was, who knew that life on Earth was only a test, that Heaven was the reward, not anything we might win here on Earth, and that the sole purpose of existence was to love God in this world and be happy with Him in the next.

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Capital meanness claims a victim

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It has been weeks now since Vincent Foster, President Clinton's boyhood friend, put a loaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

His death rocked Washington.

Few could believe, or wanted to believe, that every-day life in the nation's capital could be so mean-spirited that it would drive a man to suicide.

And so the news stories were speculative, rife with unanswered questions.

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Is that a demon? No, just a little boy

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I have never seen him, the child who lives upstairs. I heard him for the first time the morning after we moved in. Elephant hooves awakened me at 6:45 a.m. I anticipated that the beast overhead would crash through the ceiling and fall in my lap. But apartment floors are apparently constructed of sturdy wood. Good thing. It is only a floor that separates us from him.

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A sister killed, another mourns

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There is no anger in Virginia Suozzo's voice. There's pain, sorrow, even bewilderment.

But no rage.

Her 25-year-old sister, Dawn, was killed last weekend, shot in the head as she walked into their parent's house with her boyfriend, Mitch, and her 12-year-old nephew, Michael.

Dawn Brown grew up in a nice, safe Wollaston neighborhood with four sisters and a brother. The family remains close. All were at their parent's Royal Street home last weekend because Kimberlee Brown, 23, is getting married in August, and last Saturday was the ritual wedding shower.

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Drunk drivers steal tomorrow

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Todd was playing in a yard. Kristen was jogging on a country road. Michael was driving to work. Chris was driving home from work. Lisa was getting in her car. Michelle was crossing the street. All of them children. All of them alive one minute, dead or soon to be dead the next.

Christopher Baldwin, 19, back home in Somerset after his first year of college, was rollerblading last Sunday night when he was killed. Police say a 1985 Camaro struck him from behind, pitched him onto the car's roof and hurled him into a stone wall.

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Two friends forever

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If I had my old high school diary, which I read and tore into a million pieces when I was in my early 20's (Why did I write only when I was miserable? And why did I write so much about boys?), I would see pages and pages of musings about Richard.

There'd be a lot of nasty stuff, I'm sure. Not because I didn't like him. I did. I do. But I was jealous of him. I didn't like that he was so important to my best friend Rosemary. I wondered whether he would be good for her and good to her, and what would happen to me if they became a permanent pair.

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True first loves never really leave

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He was my first real love, a flesh-and-blood boy, not a creation, not someone Rosemary and I invented on a Saturday afternoon as we walked downtown, or on a Saturday night as we babysat.

Those heartthrobs - Val Poche and Jimmy Weber - were actual people, but people we didn't know. They were older boys Rosemary saw at church or at school, around whom we invented a life.

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Even today, HIStory silences the accomplishments of women

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Even today, HIStory silences the accomplishments of women

Since 1987, March has been designated National Women's History Month by the U.S. Congress. That's what Thomas Mann, a sixth grader at the Davis School in Brockton, wrote and told me. "It is a time set aside to honor women, both past and present, for their accomplishments," he said. I'd read a blurb a few days before I received his letter, which mentioned National Women's History Month, but that's been it. There have been no in-depth feature stories; no "women of the day" highlighted every day throughout the month. No widespread recognition at all…

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Everyone needs another mom

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She was a shadow figure for years, made up of parts, never a whole. Her hands washed dishes, scrubbed pots, filled pans with oils and meats and spices. Her feet walked from the table to the countertop to the stove. Her voice was soft, and always friendly. "Do you two want something to drink?" Even when it was firm, it was never harsh. She suggested; she didn't demand.

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