A woman's fancy turns to birds and flowers

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A woman's fancy turns to birds and flowers

I don't know when the birds became important. Knowing their names and their sounds. And the garden. Working it. Growing it.

Once upon a spring, it was all about the boys, chasing them away through most of grade school, first, second, third, fourth, and fifth grade, then suddenly, one day, reversing the game and running after them. Lilacs enclosed my old schoolyard, huge hedges of them that were taller than the tallest sixth-grader. And every May they perfumed the air in our stuffy, overcrowded classroom…

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Childhood is a riveting, but fleeting, show

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This is what I tell myself as I watch a man not watch his child: Cut him some slack. Don't be judgmental. Maybe this is the one time of the week when he gets to sit and relax and read a newspaper.

Maybe the child in the pool playing by himself isn't even his. Maybe this middle-aged man is merely a friend of the boy's mother, keeping her company, doing her a favor, simply hanging out and not responsible for the boy in any way.

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Hippity hoppity, feaster's on its way!

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Hippity hoppity, feaster's on its way!

I planted 200 tulips last Nov 14. I know this because I wrote it down in my gardening journal, a little book my family contends is proof that I am clearly obsessed. Who, over the age of 6, they ask, cuts out pictures of morning glory and columbine and saves the little stick-in-the ground plastic identifiers that come with potted plants? I try to explain, as I search for my glue stick and scissors, that at least what I cut and paste in my journal stays put. Look. See? Orange tulips tinged with yellow. Purple anemones. Baby coreopsis. Sapphire blue delphinium. This is what is supposed to be growing in my garden right now…

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Saturdays in the T-ball Park - Watching Little Ones Play Little League T-ball is Grandparent Bliss

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Saturdays in the T-ball Park - Watching Little Ones Play Little League T-ball is Grandparent Bliss

I've taken more than 200 pictures. A few are okay. You take photos of little kids in baseball uniforms and you're sure to get some decent shots. But not one of them comes close to capturing all that's been happening at Devoll Field in Canton, Mass., for the last six weeks.

Every Saturday morning at 8:30, the field swarms with the smallest players in town. It's Little League, T-Ball division, and the place is packed…

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Bullock should have condemned drunken driving

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Bullock should have condemned drunken driving

I've listened to their stories - the painful tales of loss that parents, daughters, husbands, and wives tell. I've looked through thick photo albums they've placed in my hands and at pictures on mantels and walls. I've followed their slouched shoulders down narrow halls, or up a few stairs into bedrooms, where memories live. These rooms are full of intimate things - sweaters hung in closets, banners tacked over beds, books, tapes, magazines, stuffed animals, trophies, a football jacket tossed on a chair, a guitar in its case, a child's flannel pajamas, sneakers in the middle of the floor as if the wearer has just stepped out of them and will be back to claim them sometime soon.

But the wearer will never be back.

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Let's just appreciate the now

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Doom and Gloom. Like Eeyore, the sad-sack donkey, the news seems to spread woe all around - in the car, on the television, at the doorstep. It bends and distorts. It turns us around, too, yanking even spring's new green rug, soft and lovely, right out from under us.

"A fine day today, folks. Definitely spring. Sunshine and in the upper 60s. But it's not going to last. Tomorrow there's a cold front coming and rain, more rain, so get those umbrellas ready." That's what someone on the radio said eight days ago when the sun was shining and the air was as soft as breath.

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Ah, peace aboard the Quiet Car

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The Quiet Car. Quiet. Even the word is hushed. Silent. Calm. Not busy or active. No talking in a LOUD voice to the person next to you. No talking on the phone. No radios blaring. No movies. No TV. No intrusive sounds at all.

The Quiet Car is Amtrak Acela's semisecret sanctum, and my once-in-a-while refuge, a place where noise of any kind is not allowed. Which is not always what I want, to be unplugged and silent and still, not when I'm traveling with friends or family or children. "Want some M&Ms? Want to play `Go Fish'? You really want me to read `Bear Snores On' again?" Sometimes noise is important.

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Faith that falters is restored today

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It's easy to believe in Easter morning, with its message of resurrection and eternal life, when the mortal life we're living is comfortable and good. When our children are tucked in their beds, safe and well. When our husband is well, too, and our mother and father and sisters and brothers; when everyone we care about is reachable, by plane or by train or by phone.

It's easy to believe in Easter morning when death is confined to newspaper headlines and illness is only a setback, not incurable. When cemeteries and chronic care facilities are not where we go every day. When it's Jesus on the cross, not our son, our mother, our daughter.

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Monster at the door cannot destroy Alice

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Monster at the door cannot destroy Alice

After I read "Still Alice" I wanted to stand up and tell a train full of strangers, "You have to get this book." I'd taken it with me to New York along with the newest Stephen King, which I was smack in the middle of - a thriller, a potboiler, a "please, please, please don't talk to me now" book. And I was looking forward to three and a half hours of uninterrupted reading time. I settled into my seat, but…

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In season of rebirth, the sounds and smiles are testament

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In season of rebirth, the sounds and smiles are testament

Rebirth, everywhere. Across the street and down the street. In my front yard and just beyond my backyard. In the ground and above the ground.

Al, my neighbor across the street whose heart stopped beating 230 days ago, turned 80 last Friday. Lazarus, I call him. And he smiles and shakes his head in wonderment and gratitude and turns to his wife, Katherine, and she smiles, too.

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Taking a 4-Year-Old to the Mall - A Walk in the Mall with Grandchildren is Never Just a Walk

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He calls it the Walka-Walka mall and we don’t correct him because walk is what Adam does at this mall. Small to us, it is huge to a 4-year-old, a sprawling place with store after store. Plus, we like that he says "Walka-Walka." We smile at his innocence. He’ll hear "Walpole mall" soon enough and Walka-Walka, like all the little-kid…

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A daughter's lesson shines a light

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A daughter's lesson shines a light

My daughter, Lauren, is always teaching me something.

When she was an infant and colicky and inconsolable, she taught me that sunshine really does follow rain. Because once the colic passed, there she was, all sweetness and smiles, a happy baby, a happy toddler, a happy child. When she was in first grade, she taught me to pay more attention to time, because there she was, suddenly, climbing onto the school bus, a little girl with two long ponytails, the baby she'd been so soon gone.

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Memories meet endless connections on the Internet

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Memories meet endless connections on the Internet

This started out being about Stephen King and his new book, "Duma Key," which I bought at Costco the other day, despite the fact that there's enough horror in the real world so why go looking for more? But I love Stephen King and I was thinking about this, authors you love, books you read that you never forget. "The Stand." "Pet Sematary."

And somehow, who knows why, totally out of the blue, I remembered "Parrish," a 1958 novel about life and love, mostly love, on a Connecticut tobacco farm, which I read when I was 11, under cover of darkness because …

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She was no saint, but she looked like one

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A woman lives and dies out of the spotlight, 88 years on earth; and who, besides her family and friends, knows the mountains she's climbed, the fears she's faced, the impossible things she's accomplished? Without headlines or a song or a book or paparazzi to record the story, what happens to the story?

In words, Louise Nolan's story would describe a saint - selfless, loving, faithful, kind. But she wasn't a saint. Saints are stoic. Saints endure, carry on, play the hand life deals. Saints sacrifice.

Louise didn't sacrifice. She loved.

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