He thinks I know everything.
He calls and tells me he's doing a report for school. "What do people who work in coal mines die from, Mimi?" he asks.
"Lung disease. Black lung. Emphysema," I tell him.
"How do you spell emphysema?"
I spell it, and he says, "Thank you…
Read MoreWhen my granddaughter Lucy, who has Down syndrome, was born almost 13 years ago, only my daughter's friend, Kerry, without missing a beat, congratulated us.
Everyone else, including me, was full of sorrow and sighs.
This was before the Internet began spreading good news…
Read MoreThe clowns at Boston Children's Hospital are not garish, over-the-top, frightening-to-kids kind of clowns. They are from Boston, after all. There's a bit of Brahmin in these likable buffoons. They know how to woo, as well as wow.
And that's exactly what they do five days a week…
Read MoreIt doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be done. That's what I've been telling myself these days. Give it a try. Do what you can. And if what you've done is a little short of excellent, if that photo of the moon is a blur, if that hibiscus you bought didn't thrive, if your gluten-free bread wouldn't win a prize, so what…
Read MoreJan Slepian is 95 and lives at Sunrise of Arlington, a senior living community. She is renowned for her children's and young adult books. She's written 28. An American Book Awards nominee, "The Alfred Summer" broke ground back in 1980 when it was published, the main character a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who, with three friends…
Read MoreDecades ago, when my husband was in Arizona with his work buddies, on a reward trip, a building-partnership trip, a "get out of Dodge it's winter here and perpetual summer there" trip, he called home the first night and announced, "It's raining."
"It's raining?" I said back. It hardly ever rains in Phoenix. Nearly 300 days…
Read MoreSometimes we lie to spare ourselves. Sometimes we lie to spare others. I like the sparing others lie.
Decades ago, when my husband was in Arizona with his work buddies, on a reward trip, a building-partnership trip, a "get out of Dodge it's winter here and perpetual summer there" trip, he called home the first night and announced, "It's raining."
"It's raining?" I said back. It hardly ever rains in Phoenix. Nearly 300 days of sun and only 20 days of any kind of precipitation, boasts the Chamber of Commerce.
"It's just a fluke. I'm sure the sun will be shining by tomorrow," my husband said confidently.
Read MoreIt started last Sunday as the rain fell and fell, that closed-in feeling, that sense of foreboding, of "Oh, no, here it comes."
It's only rain, I said out loud, an incantation, really. It's rain, not snow. Be grateful.
And I was. Or tried to be. But last winter is still in the rearview mirror, with its mountains of snow, and impassable roads and sidewalks, and caved-in roofs, and ice dams, and no place to park the car, and endless, stormy days. And there's not enough…
Read MoreI said, in December of 2014, as my husband and I were undecorating our house after it took weeks to get just so, as we were wrapping up Santas and Christmas plates, labeling snowmen and angels, packing away the creche, looking once again at all the photo cards I can't ever throw away, cards I store in a giant box in a closet and resurrect every December, that we should keep up the Christmas decorations all year long. Why not? They're bright and colorful. The tree is artificial. The garland is, too. Glitter and gold…
Read MoreIt’s noon on a late winter morning and I have already made breakfast, shoveled the driveway, interviewed a woman for a story, scrubbed the bathroom, answered emails, hand-written two thank you notes, and downloaded and edited photos for a video I’m presenting…
Read MoreI took it out on him, the person I love most. We do this sometimes. It was over the silliest thing: wreath hangers that went missing.
"Did you move those wreath hangers that were in Julie's room?" he asked, poking his head into my office. "I thought I left them there." I should have stopped what I was doing right then. Got up from my chair and helped him. If a friend had lost something, if a stranger had knocked on my door and said, "I had wreath hangers tied to the Christmas tree I have on my roof and they must have come undone because they're not there now," I would have put on my shoes, grabbed my coat, and joined him in his search…
Read MoreI miss him most at Christmas. It doesn't matter that I am too old to be missing a father. It doesn't matter that my memory is selective and that time has nipped and tucked events so that they appear perfect. Memory deceives. But Christmas, when I was a child, really was perfect. My father turned into a kid every December…
Read MoreTraditions bring comfort. Family and friends together, raising a glass, breaking bread. Turkey. Mashed potatoes. Apple pie. Freedom. Traditions like Thanksgiving bring comfort amid reminders of the tenuousness of life.In this world, where nothing changes, where people are continually fighting and…
Read MoreMy husband insists I shouldn't have been kick-boxing with women 20, well, actually 30, years younger than I am. But it wasn't real kick-boxing, It was kick-boxing light, and I did it only once and only for a half-hour and it was fun and didn't hurt at all. Until I was walking to my car. That's when age, old bones, maybe even the fates, caught up with me…
Read MoreYou never know is the reason I have a closet full of shoes and boots and coats and hats I don't wear.
For years, my husband has been suggesting that for every thing new I bring into the house, an old thing should go out. When he began telling me this a million years ago, I a) ignored him and b) was a young woman who didn't foresee that one day I might be one of the "old things." You see, my husband lives by this rule. If he buys new shoes, he throws out the scuffed-beyond-redemption ones. If he loses a glove...
Read MoreThe room looks like a private lounge at an airport. Nice carpet, good lighting, soft chairs, bright, colorful paintings, magazines and books, coffee and cookies. The dozen men who sit here, all neatly dressed, look typical. They talk. They laugh. They listen. They look as if they are discussing sports or politics or pubs in Dublin.They are, in fact, discussing cancer. Their cancer…
Read MoreThis is what haunts me. That Bella Bond's horrific murder was not a single act of violence, an aberration in an up-to-then perfect, storybook life. But that this little girl suffered every day. Conceived in a drug-induced haze in an Occupy Boston tent, she never met her father. Prosecutors say she was murdered on a mattress on a cluttered floor…
Read MoreI am looking at my grandson Adam's picture as I write this. His mother snapped it with her iPhone, an old iPhone so the picture is pixelated and a little out of focus. Still, you can see the joy in his face, a child's joy; unmasked is the word, I think. But it's the wrong word because Adam is only 11 and has nothing yet to hide…
Read MoreSometimes, I feel like Rip Van Winkle. I don't know why. I have not been asleep for 20 years. I did not wake up this morning to a universe I no longer recognize. I recognize every little thing. Still, it surprises me how you can live every day with your eyes wide open and not see change as it is happening.The big changes? They don't blindside you. They come with headlines. Wars and deaths and politics and shootings and Cuba and Greece and Donald Trump. We see them coming. But lifestyle changes…
Read MoreEvery day that someone you love is not in a hospital is a good day. That's it, plain and simple. Nothing else matters. I know this. I've been taught this again and again. And yet, I am constantly forgetting, sweating the small stuff and making mountains out of molehills. A few weeks ago…
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