Suprise Me

Compared to most mid-century couples, my parents married late. Dad was 34, Mom 29, and they figured they had no time to waste in starting a family. My brother Danny, born August 25, 1949, came first, and for a brief time he reigned unchallenged, the celebrated prince. For Dad, it was a long-deferred dream to… Read More

in a lowered voice, Kyle said, “we don’t do that thing anymore.” “What thing?” I asked. “You know,” Devon jumped in. “That thing we was drawing on the ground with our fingers.” Read More

Yad Vashem I’m not a religious person but I’ve always been proud to be Jewish and deeply connected to my faith – and moreso when I’m in Israel. The summer before he graduated from high school,  my son Noah spent 6 weeks there at a scouting program run by the Israeli army called Chetz V’Keshet… Read More

Before my children were born, they each received the classic Boston tale, “Make Way For Ducklings” as a gift. The book is so popular that in May, there is a Ducking Parade, (children dress up as ducklings) and retrace part of the duckling’s route through Beacon Hill to the safety of the Public Garden. Years… Read More

  Alright settle down there, Retros. Yes, let us talk about the television, the telly, the boob tube. Now, before you all start clutching your pearls and wailing about the “vast wasteland” that is television, à la Newton Minow, hear me out. Because amongst the endless parade of reality trash and brain-rotting sitcoms, there were… Read More

Let us set aside the mechanical act of moving the clock hands forward, and think instead on the clock's underlying  connection to the seasonal changes in our natural world... Read More

Rainbow Row,  Charleston SC Brass Ankle I was raised in the Bronx, New York in 50s and 60s when the demographics were such that families in the  borough were predominantly Jewish – like mine – or Catholic.   In fact my friend Kathie, whose family was Moravian,  tells me she was often the only WASP… Read More

There are flashes of behaviors and preferences, most of them quirky, that I have which are just like my mother's. Read More

Trust yourself. Read More

The One Who Got Away Like all red-bloodied,  pubescent American girls of the 50s I certainly did my share of dating. In junior high school we started to pair off and with little information and probably more mis-information about the birds and the bees,  we experimented.   (My cowardly parents,  rather than having that embarrassing… Read More