Suprise Me

Two memories, perhaps not unique but important to my youth! Living in Connecticut, we vacationed for two or three years at a “camp” on Great Pond of the Belfast Lakes in Maine. It was just my brother and I then, before another brother and a sister, so we loaded into the car and headed up… Read More

Minyan – for Uncle Sol I don’t think of myself as an especially spiritual person, but after the death of my husband’s uncle Sol,  I had a religious experience. Sol,  who died just short of his 96th birthday,  was a surrogate father of sorts to my husband,  and grandfather to our son,  and a much… Read More

The Brown family, a farming family with roots in the American Revolution, invited my family to watch the McCarthy hearings on television. We didn’t have a TV and, like most of the established families in our little Massachusetts town, the Browns wanted us to know they didn’t like Joe McCarthy and his witch hunt one… Read More

Haters gonna hate, but I gotta tell you, it is fun to root for a winning team. Over the last couple of years, I have become quite the Patriots fan, political bedfellows aside. I grew up in a household with a father who watched football, baseball and golf constantly, then I married a huge sports… Read More

Barbi Benton pretty much owned the spelling of her name, and in the 80s, despite the fact that we had the same hairdo, I was dismissive of her anyway, for being in Playboy, and for being Hugh Hefner’s main squeeze. Read More

We understood we were trespassing. But we figured that folks who lived in a region like this must do this all the time, right? Just drive up and take a quick dip? Read More

It has been nineteen weeks since we first started trying to "flatten the curve." How are we doing? Results are mixed. Read More

Holiday in Limbo It’s hard to believe but with the passing of the generations I’m now the family matriarch. It’s not my great-uncle Sid leading Seder but my husband,  not my aunt Babs cooking Rosh Hashanah dinner but me,  not my dad carving the Thanksgiving turkey but my son. But will he this year?  A… Read More

Where did I go wrong? Now the breakfast dish is left on the counter, The ice cream bowl from the night before put in the sink with no water. The peanut butter knife put in the dishwasher, but not rinsed. I tell him – he needs to rinse dishes before placing them in the dishwasher.… Read More

While gaggles of kids talked and laughed at lunch, I found a quiet corner and savored my solitude as I ate my sandwich alone. Thanks to a thoughtful custodian who unlocked a room for me, I could avoid being seen; I spent my period of exile in silent, and sometimes salty, contemplation. Read More