Suprise Me

Most of the conventional wisdom for caregivers comes down to putting yourself first, making time for yourself. To a large degree, that’s a crock. Your priorities won’t come first for the present, and probably for a while. Read More

My father was leaving the lecture hall when he stepped out of the doorway and a snowball—or more accurately, an ice ball—came hurling from the side and hit him directly across his open eye. Read More

(I keep updating this story as I learn new information about my long-lost, but still fascinating cousin.) The last time I saw him was in October of 1980. He’d called my office a day earlier. “You’ve got to come up over the weekend. It’s fantastic here.” Trying to get a room in Woodstock, VT over… Read More

It wasn't clear how getting a job happened in Russia, but I soon figured out it was nothing like in the United States. Read More

Photos of families, couples, and mobs, shuttered or pixilated images preserve decades of life, love, and memory, chaos captured, order performed. Random or planned, group photos reflect group purpose. We gathered to chronicle the choking, smoke-filled days and siren-screaming nights of ’92, to project a cinematic family photo, to replicate violence against a lone black… Read More

As a child I was a voracious reader, devouring all the book series that were popular at that time — The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, Sue Barton, and Honey Bunch and Norman. Of these five, the only one that seems to have survived is Nancy Drew. Maybe a girl detective has more staying… Read More

We watched the events of 9/11 with a kind of detached horror, since we didn’t personally know any of the victims. Or did we? Read More

Jeffrey (now Vicki, but not in 2002, so, for purposes of this story, I will refer to my younger child as Jeffrey) was a non-believer. He told us at the age of 3 he didn’t believe in God. I still wanted him to go through with religious education to understand his background, his place in… Read More

Sally gallantly offered that I could take the MG, but I wouldn’t consider it—far too untrustworthy to risk taking over the bridge. Read More

The storms began as I left her house with her kiss still on my lips, and grew in ferocity as I drove south along the Turnpike. Read More