Friendly circle grows sweeter

Francesca filled them with chocolate this year. Not all of them. Just some.

They were small and round and hidden at the bottom of a plate, underneath the thin strips of sugary fried cookies that she makes and brings to my house every fall. Francesca bakes her special cookies and Liz makes her special salad and I order pizza and everyone brings wine. It's a tradition, a small party we had for the first time eight years ago when our children went off to college…

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Dog Days Are to be Cherished

Her paws are more white than black these days, and her muzzle is white and the place on her belly where she loves to be scratched is all white, too. My dog is old.

She sleeps most of the day, waking only to bark at the mailman, to wag and woof at anyone who comes to the door, and to indulge in her favorite pastime, which is, of course, eating. Molly loves food - all food. When I open the refrigerator, no matter if she is half a house away and in a dead sleep, she comes running. At least she tries to run…

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Their courage is breathtaking

Their courage is breathtaking

Somewhere, on an old home movie, still on a reel, are seconds of Amy doing cartwheels in my garage. The film is dark, so her face is hidden. But you can see clearly her small, thin body, her short, straight hair and her dark-rimmed glasses, which, even when she wasn't doing cartwheels, were always slipping down her face. Amy did cartwheels the way she did everything, as if she had to do as many as she could, while she could. As if she knew she had to set records in record time…

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Parent's age is measured not in years, but in memories

Parent's age is measured not in years, but in memories

My father was sick last week. The heat ambushed him. He has never been able to tolerate heat. He blames the malaria he had in the war for this. Before Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower marched him through Africa, he was fine, he says. After the war, he wasn't. The heat, since, has always slowed him down.

But it has never stopped him before.

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Growing up, growing together create a lifetime of memories

Thirty-four years ago my husband and I stood at the altar at St. Bernadette's Church in Randolph and before God and friends promised to love one another until death did us part.

Death was something straight out of the movies back then, drama relegated to the final scene. So were the words: "To have and to hold, from this day forth."

I was 20. The groom was 21. Our favorite song was the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" ("if we were married").

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For those of a certain age, good manners make the man

For those of a certain age, good manners make the man

He didn't know me from Adam. We'd just met, talked a little, exchanged the usual pleasantries. He used to write sports for the Herald, he said. He was originally from Somerville. He was married for 43 years. He was man of a certain age. We left the university together because we were both going home instead of staying for a dinner. He was taking the T back to Melrose. I was hailing a cab back to the paper…

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Mentor was the inspiration for a lifetime of memories

Mentor was the inspiration for a lifetime of memories

I 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.

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Saying goodbye to childhood

I take the trophies off my daughter's bookshelf, earned in dance and gymnastics and softball, and wrap them in newspaper and put them in a box and write on the box in Magic Marker, "Julie's trophies." Then I do the same with the plaques on her wall and the dolls on her dresser and the stuffed animals on her bed and her schoolbooks and notebooks and photographs and Disney figurines.

I am cleaning out my youngest daughter's room, packing away her things because it is time. She doesn't live here anymore. I am converting her bedroom into a sitting room, taking down her posters and repainting the walls, emptying her bureau and desk drawers of all her childhood things to make room for new things.

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Still giving life to his father

Still giving life to his father

Robert sits on a chair next to his father's bed. He holds his father's hand and talks to him just to talk. He tells him about the day's news, about a weekend they spent in Maine, about all the people who have come to the hospital to visit. When an aide arrives to take his father's temperature with a thermometer she has to put in his ear, Robert explains the procedures. His father motions and Robert understands. "You want some water?" he asks. The older man nods and Robert adjusts the bed and holds his father and puts a cup to his lips and says, "It's coming," as he tilts the cup so that just a tiny bit of liquid drips into his father's mouth. More than a little will make him choke and cough and struggle for breath. And he is struggling hard enough as it is.

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Mom knows it's time to let go

Mom knows it's time to let go

It's been all dress rehearsals until now. I left, she left, but we always came back to one another. That was the ending. When she was an infant, I left her for the first time to go to a party at the Ponkapoag Civic. I didn't want to go. But everyone said "She'll be fine." So I went and kept looking at the clock.

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True friendships can easily pass test of time and distance

We met for lunch Thursday. I hadn't seen her in so many years that I was afraid I might not recognize her. But I did - instantly. There she was waving to me from a table, same blonde hair, same big smile. People don't change. They just become more of who they are.

We were good friends for a while, way back when friendship was easy, when every day was play day. We were pregnant together, due within weeks of each other. We were pregnant for the first time - excited, scared and young.

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A yard sale is mostly sport

It's a curious custom, taking things you don't want and no longer need, dragging them to the front lawn, marking them with a price tag, then selling them.

But that's what we do. A dime for a Johnny Tilliston record. It's not high finance. It's trading.

At the end of the day, all you have is a pocketful of change, but it's like when you were a kid and shook coins out of a piggy bank. It's found money. And it's fun.

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'If I want to be good, I have to practice'

Every 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.

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One more day to live in the sun

One more day to live in the sun

Five weeks after she had her second leg amputated the doctors sent her home with health aides coming in just a few hours a day. I was terrified for her and for me. How could this 85-year-old woman live without constant help? How would she get from the bed to the wheelchair, from the wheelchair to the bathroom? How could she maneuver the wheelchair through an opening so small that I had trouble when I pushed the chair? Where would she get the strength and the patience to perform such a task?

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Ah, to be young and oh so sure

Ah, to be young and oh so sure

He didn't exactly swagger into the house. He walked the way he always does. Only he walked with confidence.

He didn't hunch through a doorway. He didn't slouch in a chair. He sat like a capital "L" perfectly straight, not crossing and uncrossing his arms, not shuffling his feet, not looking like a corralled horse eager to bolt.

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Memory: Where all is safe

Memory: Where all is safe

My friend Anne e-mails me an excerpt from "Listening to Your Life," a book of daily meditations by Frederick Buechner. I find it on my computer at 5 a.m.

It is dark. The house is quiet, and I feel a little like the shoemaker in the old children's tale. I tiptoe downstairs to find that someone has been working while I've been sleeping, a pair of shoes on the workbench already made. An idea on the computer, already hatched.

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Oh, to be a kid again in summer

Oh, to be a kid again in summer

The 18-year-old calls from a pay phone after work, before play rehearsal and we talk about our day and then she says, "I miss summer." And though it is the middle of summer, hot and sunny and steamy, I know exactly what she means. She misses being a kid. She misses all those long, lazy days that when you're 8 or 10 or 12, you're sure will last forever. She misses staying up late at night watching movies and videotapes of school plays, and waking slowly in the morning, sleeping until she's no longer tired, not until some alarm wakes her.

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