I didn't hear the song a single time this summer, but it played in my head anyway, buzzing around like a pesky bee: "Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer." Nat King Cole's smooth-as-honey voice trailing me all the way through June, July and August. Most years summer never lives up to this song. This year the song didn't have a prayer of living up to summer.
Read MoreRobert 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.
Read MoreThis column was written a long time ago, when my dog, Molly, was alive and my cousin, Xena, was a child, not a mother of two. Before I had grandchildren. Before Katherine moved away. But the first week of August is now as it was then. The Top of the Ferris Wheel. And I still celebrate it every year on August1st. Here’s why:
The dog days of summer are the tops, the best life gets. So on August 1, every year I stop what…
Read Moret's official. She suffers from separation anxiety, which is why she eats socks and scarves and those cloth-covered scrunchies you put in your hair. She loves us and can't stand to be separated from us and by devouring what is ours she is, in a very real way, keeping us with her always. Welcome to Doggy Psychology 101. Or man's relentless effort to find a rational explanation for irrational behavior…
Read MoreAt first it was background noise, nothing more, I swear. I wasn't really listening to the man on the radio talking about root balls, and even if I were, I was only half listening. I was curious, that's all. Not addicted. Not yet. But now I am. Come 7 a.m. on Saturday mornings I'm up and tuned in to 99.1 FM, sitting at the kitchen table listening to Paul Parent tell me things like "clematis requires sweet soil" and the way to make soil sweet is to sprinkle a little lime into it, but not bone meal because that attracts animals…
Read MoreWe have a picture of him somewhere, a broken-hearted five-year-old, slumped on a bench at Disney World, eyes fighting back tears, lips so tense you can almost see them quivering, his felt Mickey Mouse ears cocked to one side…
Read MoreIt has been the nicest spring, more sun than rain, more warmth than cold, April showers bring May flowers, a little behind the curve. April's been full of flowers, the kind you plant and the kind that pop up all over the place all by themselves. They're my favorite kind…
Read MoreWe are like puppies trailing him, at his heels, our ears up when he speaks, our eyes bright and shiny, so happy that if we had tails, they'd be wagging right now. The reason is simple. Our son is home from England, not home for good, but home for a week, home from work, not war. It's nothing momentous, yet it feels it…
Read MoreThe tragic shares space with the trivial. It's how we cope. It's how we absorb what is: bitter coffee diluted with cream. "Crisis in Kosovo" the computer reports, right next to "Roof leaking? Bank One - Home equity lines. Apply on-line before the flood." "Kosovo Albanians Forced to Help Lay Mines." "First USA Platinum VISA on AOL only." What to worry about? Life and death or low-interest loans?
Read MoreMy friend, a priest, tells this tale at Christmas. It is, after all, set on a December day. But I think it's a Good Friday story, too. It goes like this: A farmer lives with his wife and children somewhere off the beaten path. Picture Robert Frost country, a house, a field, a barn. It is Christmas Eve and the wife and two children are dressed for church. "Come with us," the wife says to her husband as he walks her to the car. He shakes his head. He's not a believer. "I'll see you when you get back," he replies. The man goes inside, pours some coffee, opens the newspaper. And then it starts to snow.
Read MoreIt'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.
Read MoreA schmaltzy, feel-good thing came over the Internet this week. I printed and saved it because sometimes feel-good schmaltz is nice, a kind of flannel for the heart, soft and warm and comforting.
It's a long piece, however, three typed pages, so this is just a sample. The theme is "I've learned." "I've learned - "That no matter how much I care some people just don't care back. That it takes years to build up trust and only seconds to destroy it. "I've learned - "That it's not what you have in your life but who you have in your life that counts." I got to thinking that I've learned a few things too. Some not so soft, but warm still, and useful, rather like an itchy wool scarf.
Read MoreGetting back on the horse. Buckling up and down. The party's over, the holidays are past. The lights are packed in boxes, the tree's in the trash, the presents put away, the cookies eaten, the chocolates from Hilliard's mercifully gone.It's time to swear off junk food and…
Read MoreIn his baby book there are pictures of my son sitting on his father's lap, a "before" picture in which soft, white curls frame his baby face and an "after" picture in which the baby face is the same and only the curls are missing…
Read MoreI imagine 20 years or 40 or a lifetime later, a person driving by the spot where a loved one had died would slow down, look at the landscape and remember. That person might feel not the sharp pain of new loss, but the memory of sorrow. The time might never come when that bend in the road, or that cross walk, or that grown over path, the place where life permanently changed, was simply another part of the road…
Read MoreThey were just kids three years ago. Raquel was 15 and Andrea barely 20 and if life wasn’t always as sweet as ribbon candy, it was sometimes.
Then came the accident.
It was November 3, 1995. Their mother, Luella…
Read MoreWhat you want is to turn back the clock, to make it Tuesday morning again, early, and make the accident not have happened, to change the confluence of things - the rain, the timing, a car being where is was? A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later and what is would not be. What you want is to give three dead children and one broken one back to their parents, whole…
Read More“I want my old life back.” That’s what the woman whispered between sobs.
I heard her, though I was just walking by, walking past, trying not to hear, trying not to look, not to see.
“I want my old life back,” she said again, louder this time, and I stopped walking and looked directly at her, a broken, old woman bent and…
Read MoreThe backpacks look alike. This is my sole defense. But I don't mention this as we drive silently along. The Berlin Wall was just a picket fence compared to the wall between us. When in trouble, remain mum, that's the rule. I learned this from the leader of the free world, President Clinton, who is an expert on at least one virtue. But silence is difficult for me. What I'd like to do is talk - argue, plead, say to the man who promised to love me for better or worse (and this is definitely worse) that I made a simple, run-of-the-mill, everyday, garden-variety mistake.
Read MoreA few gold sequins on the front steps. That’s all that remains of her. Everything else was here before she came: A book of children’s rhymes. A box of crayons. A deck of cards. She spilled the sequins her last time…
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