Naming Nature’s Sounds
/I wake to birdsong these days, to trills and cheeps and caws, a chorus that begins in the dark. It doesn't obliterate the noise of traffic and trains and planes and sirens. But I hear the birds first and I wake up smiling.
I don't know what kinds of birds are singing, but my friend Anne does. She can identify them by their sounds. Sometimes I'll walk…
Read MoreNever Say Never
/“The tooth is missing. It will never come in. Missing teeth are common among children with Down syndrome,” the specialist told my daughter and son-in-law months ago.
He didn’t cushion his words. He didn’t say, “May not.” He said never.
And then last week, there it was – a lower right lateral incisor, next to her lower right central incisor, exactly where it belongs.
Read MoreFather Coen made it easier to keep the faith
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It was easier when Father Coen was alive. His faith was strong and certain, and as long as he was here, my faith was strong and certain, too. I called him my window through whom I saw God. And he said, "God is everywhere. You know that." I know it sometimes, but not all the time. Not enough of the time. Not the way I knew it when he was here to remind me…
Read MoreLet's not use words that have power to wound
/I like to believe that it's a lack of thought and not meanness that makes people use words that hurt. That they're going with the flow, following the crowd, saying what everyone else is saying with no intent to wound.
But words do wound.
Read MoreA new baby brings a song to her heart
/Lucy is my first grandbaby, and her song just came. I didn't expect it, so I didn't go looking for it. It found me.
I was singing all the time back then, when my first daughter was pregnant. "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" and "My Special Angel." "You'll Never Know Just How Much I Love You" and, of course, "Baby Love."
The baby wasn't even close to being born, but I was already head over heels in love. And people in love are known to do some strange things, like walk on clouds and burst into song.
Read MoreReleasing a treasure trove of memories
/Old memories, like flotsam and jetsam, bob to the surface at odd times. I am sitting in church with my granddaughter, Lucy, loving the feel of her arms around my neck. She is all mine in church, no distractions, no one to whisk her away. And I am thinking about Father Coen, and how he used to say that it didn't matter if children understood the Mass. Their presence was enough. That taking kids to church was like taking them to baseball games. Eventually they would come to know and love both.
Read MoreGlorify the quiet streetlight
/The Boston Globe
February 25, 2007
Memories, a faraway laugh, in a birthday phone call
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`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 MoreLucy's learning. But are doctors?
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When I brush my granddaughter Lucy's hair and put it in a ponytail, I always kiss the back of her neck. And she giggles. She is 3. She talks. She dances. She goes to school. She plays house and tea, and kick ball and follow the leader. She loves books and Bambi and church and playing with her cousin Adam. Lucy has Down syndrome. She looks and acts more like a 2-year-old than a 3-year-old. But is this so awful? Don't we say, "Children grow up too fast"? Lucy isn't growing up too fast. She's taking her time.
Read MoreHouse a symbol of what's wrong
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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 MoreAfter decades of darkness, light
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Her history is hospitals. They're where she lived, where she grew up and where parts of her died. They were the best hospitals, the Ivy Leagues of psychiatric care. Her father, a heart surgeon, trusted these places, with their names that overshadowed their failures. They had big reputations and bigger price tags. He took her to one after another. But his daughter slipped deeper into herself and further away from him. He wouldn't give up. He refused to accept the "We're sorry, but there's nothing more we can do" he kept hearing. "If you try something four times and it doesn't work, then you try it again," says Dr. Frank Spencer, now in his 80s.
Read MoreA Grandmother's Unspoken Love
/I thought she was doing me a favor. All the times I would call her on the phone and ask, "Will you watch Robbie this afternoon?" or "Can the kids spend the night?" And when she said yes, which she always did, I thought she was sacrificing her plans and her energy to watch my children.
Now I know better. Now I know…
Read MoreI'm sure she knows I loved her
/
She died on a Monday in September between a weekend when my son was home and a Tuesday night pizza party. The sun didn't blink; the world didn't pause. Nothing happened - there was no presentiment of change, not even a flicker of feelings to make me think of her, my long ago friend, a woman I loved, a woman who was good to me, passing through and by and on. Flo Grossman died on Sept. 25 and I didn't know until Dec. 19. How can this be? The world should have felt different that Monday - slighter, duller, because the space filled by a vibrant life was suddenly left vacant.
Read MoreCards are season's best gifts
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I will miss the cards the most. Not the music, though I have loved having the radio on all day, one Christmas song after another. But there will be hymns, still, at all the churches all the way through Epiphany.
Read MoreHelping one family at a time
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Terry Orcutt spends her days on the phone and most evenings, too, listening, taking notes, asking questions. "Where do you live? What do you need? How many children do you have?" Her concern is real. Her love for people she doesn't know is real, too. It's what drives her and what sustains her, call after call. "Love one another as I love you." This is Christianity's number one rule. Terry Orcutt lives this rule. She loves without question. She sees God in all people. So does her husband, Jim.
Read MoreGifts we count on every Christmas
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It stays the same. That's what I love about Christmas. In a world that is always changing, Christmas doesn't. It may get a bit grander every year, yes, and the season starts a little sooner. But the hymns and the colors and the lights and the gift giving, the baby in the manger, Santa at the North Pole - the crazy, religious, secular mix that is this holy day/holiday hasn't changed in my lifetime. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" and "Here Comes Santa Claus" I sang as a kid and I'm singing now.
Read MoreMourning the hidden tragedy in Iraq
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Adam is my prism. I look at life through his eyes. He is 20 months old, and everything is new to him. And so far, everything is good. He's loved. He's healthy. He sees the world as a safe place. I know the world isn't safe. And it scares me sometimes, the difference between what he sees and what I know. Life is fragile. It's why we swaddle infants, and put bumper pads in cribs and seat belts in cars and inoculate against disease. It's why parents don't sleep some nights, many nights, worrying about all that can go wrong.
Read MoreThe loneliness of old age cries out for comfort
/`They're all so busy." That's what she says whenever I ask about her family. She insists that they aren't ignoring her, that they're busy with work and school and friends and shopping and sports and meetings. That's why she doesn't see them often. She understands. She's not complaining. She used to be busy, too, her door always open, people coming and going, the phone ringing, then more people stopping by. It was a whirlwind for 20, 30, 40 years, and she was at the center, in the kitchen cooking, baking, the teapot always warm. She was a joiner, too. She belonged to church and civic groups. She rang other people's doorbells. She didn't stand still, not ever. Life was always too full of things to do.
Read MoreWhen 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.
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