Suprise Me

Growing up, the only people of color I knew were our cleaning woman, Pam, and a series of successors whose names I can’t recall. Read More

My mother always had a fondness for the scroll of hand-painted figures, dressed in traditional Chinese clothes, carrying produce or hawking other wares.  They were framed in pieces and hung on the wall along with other mementoes from her time in Peking (now Beijing) in the late 1940’s.  She lived in a neighborhood of classic… Read More

My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel The leader of a writing workshop I took years ago asked us to think back to our earliest memories and write about a place our heart remembers.   I thought of my grandmother’s hotel in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York where I spent childhood summers.  (See My Game… Read More

I’m still in touch with my best friend whom I’ve known since 1954. Every time we talk or get together, even if it’s been after many years, the topic of food in our childhood is brought up, once again. We lived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., outside of Alexandria, VA. There was a small… Read More

The world shook beneath my feet and I loved it. Read More

Actually, even as a lifelong Democrat (my parents indoctrinated me well), I kind of still like Ike. Read More

Another friend had a bumper sticker—“Live simply that others may simply live”—that still seems like good advice. Read More

They say you never forget how to ride—it is, after all, “just like riding a bicycle”. Read More

But little hands lifted the top of the garbage pail, and discovered the resting place of the gumdrop tree. Read More

My childhood pets included dogs, a pair of gold fish a free-range parakeet and a friendly chicken.  Unfortunately, all of whom – or which – met tragic ends. The gold fish story first, as it is the first pet I remember.  There were 2 of them living in a little round globe.  My brother and… Read More