“Even the labels in the stores don’t tell you what you really want to know,” my friend said when I told him I was writing a piece about all the labels that are attached to people. I am a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a writer, a wanna-be singer, a friend. I am a baby boomer, a college graduate, a home owner, a recovering Catholic, a mother-in-law…
Read MoreAh, for the good old days — just a few short years ago — when the grandkids were one, two, and three. Christmas shopping was a breeze! I couldn't make a bad choice. Everything I picked out and brought home was perfect.
"Mom, I love the matching dresses!" one daughter gushed. “I love the Frosty hat and mittens," said the other.
I love the toys! I love the books! I love everything! That’s all I heard.
I was in Grandparent Heaven. I bought a Fisher-Price zoo, a farm, even the Christmas manger. I bought extra little people. I bought a tea set and a tractor. I bought…
Read MoreI can't attend his funeral. I'll be out of town, 3,000 miles away. It doesn't matter, I suppose. The truth is, I hardly knew him.
And yet I knew him once. We were children together. We lived in the same Randolph neighborhood, went to the same church, waited at the same bus stop every morning and sat under the same roof, though not always in the same classroom, for four long years, because the years are long when you're 7 and 8 and 9 and 10.
Read MoreMy Uncle Frank died last week. He was 82, but he looked 70. He had thick gray hair and not a wrinkle on his face and he stood straight and he smelled good and he was solid and sturdy, inside and out, and I felt that strength every time I hugged him. I believed, I hoped, he would live forever. Decades ago, when he was in his 40s, doctors gave him six months to live. They told my Aunt Lorraine and she told her children and me. But she never told him.
Read MoreIt is a perfect little tree, the kind a first-grader would draw and be proud of, with a skinny trunk leading up to skinnier branches raised like a music director's skinny arms when she is beckoning an audience to sing. It's a minimalist tree. Not a stunner like the dogwood in front of the Canton Public Library or the magnolias that line Boston's Marlborough Street. Or the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., or California's redwoods. Nobody would ever stop and gape at it. Or take its picture. But I do.
Read MoreI wanted to be like my grandmother. So I wrote out stories for my grandchildren, short, rhyming "Good Night" stories. Later, I decided to publish them. I would write some letters. I would make some phone calls. I would not give up. I would get this done. This is what I told myself. I wrote one letter. And got some great advice about structure and how to tell a better story. Then I went on line for the next step and learned that it can take up to five years to have a children's book published. Five years? I didn’t want to wait five years. Now it is six years later…
Read More"Tammy" was the favorite song of my best friend, Rosemary, and me. But after singing it at the Policeman's Ball in 1957, I set it aside for over 40 years. Then one night, it reappeared out of the blue when I couldn't get my granddaughter to sleep.
They fall asleep to "Tammy." It's their lullaby of choice.
"Want me to sing you a song?" I ask whenever they are mine for a night and every one of them, every time, says, "Yes, Mimi. Will you sing 'Tammy?' "
Read MoreAt first glance, George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" has nothing to do with Charlie Wilson in "Charlie Wilson's War." But with some help from my grandson, Adam, I learned otherwise.
It takes just one caring person to change the world. That's what my grandson, Adam, learned at school last month.
Read MoreThe Boston Globe
Beverly Beckham
I used to celebrate a birth month, not just a birthday. But this year was different. This year I was strangely quiet about the whole thing. The quiet you get when you realize there will be enough candles on your cake to boil eggs, and the sleep lines that used to disappear five minutes after you woke up have long been permanent.However, I have discovered an antidote to the ever-accelerating passage of years.
Usually I go around telling people that it's my birthday when it's an entire month away. "Only 30 more days," I say. "Only two more weeks. Only 12 more hours!"
Usually, I announce this to everyone and anyone. It's not a birth day, I explain. It's a birth month. And usually I feel shortchanged because my birth month is February.
This year was different. This year I was strangely quiet about the whole thing. Not grumpy quiet, but incredulous quiet.
The quiet you get when you realize there will be enough candles on your cake to boil eggs, and the sleep lines that used to disappear five minutes after you woke up have long been permanent.
I remember how shocked I was by the number 40. I peered in the mirror that day and looked at my face and inspected my forehead and thought, "I have so many lines!" So I started wearing bangs.
I remember how I felt when I turned 50 and looked in the mirror and couldn't find my waist. I'd had a waist my entire life. I'd had a waist just the week before. But then 50 came and, poof, it was gone. So I started wearing sweaters.
I remember the day I turned 60. I had learned by then not to look in the mirror.
Now I am post-60. Post-post. Actually, pre-70 is more precise. In less time than it takes to pay off a car loan, I will be 70. If I'm lucky. "You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't," is the phrase that leaps to mind.
My father always said, when I began to be stunned by the numbers, how they accelerate every year and how they push you into categories you're never ready for — your 30s, your 40s, middle age, late-middle age.
"If you think you feel old, how do you think I feel having a daughter your age?" And then in a kinder and more philosophical tone, he'd add, "How old would you think you were if you didn't know how old you are? If there were no mirrors and no one around to tell you your age?"
He didn't always know the right thing to say, but sometimes he did.
My birthday came despite my inattention to it and my grandkids called and sang to me, first the Canton contingent, then the New York kids.
When the first group finished "Happy Birthday," I said, "Aren't you going to sing, 'Are you 1? Are you 2? Are you 3?Are you 4?"' And they laughed at me. Except Adam, who hung in and counted all the wayto 67, which took some time. Luke, who is 4 and wanted to count too, said, "But, Mimi, I can't count that high."
Mimi. This is the antidote to age, what turns gray to silver and straw to gold, this name and this role in a person's life. "Auntie" is the same, and "Caryn" and "Nona" and "GAA" and any name that's said in a tone that children use when they love you so purely and so blindly, that it makes your heart hurt in a place you didn't even know you had.
Until you had them.
"Mimi, will you read me a book? Mimi, will you sing me a song? Mimi, when are you coming to visit? Happy birthday, Mimi."
I hear that word and wrinkles and a lost waist and even the ever-accelerating years cease to matter. Because these children don't see my wrinkles or my missing waist. They see Mimi. They see me.
My friend Anne and I play this game: We're in a fancy store, maybe an art gallery or pricey boutique, and our mission is to pick out the one thing we would buy if we could buy anything — price and need and size (where would we put that?) irrelevant. It's all about wants, and it's a fun game to play because at the end of the day, we have no guilt. No maxed out credit cards, no buyer's remorse, nothing to regret. We go to dinner and toast our restraint.
Read MoreOn a cold November day, a penny, a car, and a tankful of gas took my grandson and me on an adventure.
'It's a game Mom and I played once," my grandson tells me. "This is what you do. You toss a penny and if it lands heads up, you take a right, and if it lands heads down, you take a left.”
I ask him if he's read "The Penny…
Read MoreThe costumes, the candy, the creepiness; October 31 is wicked-good fun.
I am going to miss the Halloween parade this year. The first time ever. The first time my children and grandchildren will march without me.
It’s a small parade but it closes down the main street of our town for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon every October. Kids and parents and grandparents dress up as witches and ghouls and princes and princesses. Some families dress as movie characters: Dorothy and the…
Read MoreOctober is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. It is also Disability Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Bullying Prevention Month, AIDS Awareness Month, and Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
And the list continues. Every month is full of awareness events.
I'm aware that all these events cause traffic jams. When I'm stuck on Storrow Drive or at the end of my busy street, I sometimes think, "What now?"
Read More'It's one of those days you talk about when they are babies. . . . "She will be in 1st grade when he is in 4th.' "
This is what my daughter Julie wrote on her Facebook page last week under the pictures of her children, Adam and Charlotte, posing in their front yard on the first day of school.
Facebook was full of pictures of big and little kids shyly grinning and of moms and dads writing "Look who's excited to start her first day of school!" and "Yes, that is a tie!" and "Where does it go? Feeling old!"
Read MoreI always wanted a sister or a brother or both or somebody.
I never liked being an only child.
My mother used to tell me that I was enough. But I knew I wasn't. Her sister had six kids. She had just me. She wanted babies and I wanted siblings. There were times we both thought we would get our dream. But it didn't happen.
Read MoreIt was the middle of the heat wave and we were inside sitting on the floor, Lucy using my iPad, looking at Disney characters on YouTube. "Not that. Not that. Not that. This one, Mimi!"
Then she clicked and Mulan sang.
"Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?"
Read MoreIt was the middle of the heat wave and we were inside sitting on the floor, Lucy using my iPad, looking at Disney characters on YouTube. "Not that. Not that. Not that. This one, Mimi!"
Then she clicked and Mulan sang.
"Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?"
Read MoreKids have no lists. No calendars. No scraps of paper with scribbled reminders to pay bills, get dental floss. No baby sitters to call. No appointments to keep. No shopping to do, no places to go and things to buy. Spreadsheets? Quicken? "Where's the coupon for Jiffy Lube?" and "Has anyone seen the laundry receipt?" "Thank you for contacting me, but I'm away on vacation and will not be checking my e-mail. If you need immediate assistance, please contact. . . All these things are in the future.
Childhood is a paper boat borne along by a lazy breeze on a summer day.
Read MoreCaryn and I raised our kids together. We were kids together, but we didn't know it then. We thought we were grown-ups, 19 and 20, both of us in love, engaged, both of us planning our weddings. She was my husband's friend first. He knew her from Trinity Episcopal Church, where both their families were active members, in the choir, on committees. We met for the first time at her parents' house. It was Christmas Eve. She introduced me…
Read MoreThere is no "ex" in father. Once a father, always a father.
My father used to say this to me, though not in these words. He used to say, because I was his only child, his "one and only" (these are his words), that he was the only one in the "whole world" (more of his words) who could call me "daughter." And I was the only one in the whole world who could call him "father."
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