…and they want their stuff back! Oh, the clunkyness of it all. This photo is easily worth one thousand words, but instead: my favorite screen saver: On Mighty Toaster Wings!                 Read More

No matter where I am–at home or abroad–people ask me for directions. I don’t know why. Most of the time I can answer correctly, but I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes. Years ago, I brought this up at lunch with my friends and colleagues at the high school where I worked. One of the (younger)… Read More

My favorite fairy tale? Hands down, it’s “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Why? The princesses would dress up every night and disappear though a secret tunnel to dance the night away with handsome princes. They would return the next morning, their shoes worn out from dancing.  I loved that story, partly because of the new shoes… Read More

My story begins at the end of a harrowing week, the week my 81 year old father died. His kind heart, the one he always wore on his sleeve, finally gave out. He had warned me in so many words: you never have as much time as you think you do. He died on a… Read More

My name is Risa. That’s R-I-S-A. When I was growing up, I was the only Risa I had ever heard of. Surrounded by a gaggle of girls named Karen, Kathy, Linda, Carol, Nancy, and Diane, I was one of a kind. I got used to fielding the comments and questions: No, it’s not short for… Read More

This is what I read at my Dad’s funeral in 2001. It sums up many of the life lessons I learned from him. My dad was a teacher, and like many outstanding teachers, he never took time off from teaching. Sure, there were vacations and summers, but he was always on the job. If no… Read More

Billy Joel’s recording of  “Just the Way You Are” was released (or “dropped” as we say now) in September of 1977. By early 1978, the song was still getting a lot of airplay on the radio. During the nearly four months my daughter was in the Intensive Care Nursery at UCSF, my husband and I … Read More

The first time I saw snow was the year my family lived in Manhattan. My sister and I attended elementary school across the street from our building.  We’d bundle up in our new winter coats, pants, mittens, and boots. Just one winter: getting used to the smell of wet things drying on the radiator, taking… Read More

This prompt gave me the opportunity to write about my pediatrician, Dr.Elizabeth Torrey Andrews. In a weird coincidence, I googled her and discovered an obituary in the Reed College magazine, the college my younger son graduated from. Dr. Andrews was only a Reedie for one year (1923), then transferred to the University of Oregon, following… Read More

As kids, we started thinking about the next Halloween on November first. Over the next several months, ideas were floated, refined, discarded, and resurrected. These were the most important decisions a kid could make in those days. As a parent, I had to wait patiently while my kids repeated this cycle of indecision, hoping that… Read More