Suprise Me

I took my first airplane trip long before my first train trip, but I love trains so much more. Read More

Tradition! As a child I heard Yiddish spoken by my European-born grandparents and my first-generation American parents,  yet I never had the curiosity to learn to speak it myself. But my parents subscribed to New York’s Yiddish theatre company,  the Folksbiene,  and I’d go with them and follow the plays by reading the English supertitles.… Read More

This past year has made me realize what really matters most to me. Read More

Sometimes an interstate exit can lead you to a new life, even in the midst of tragedy. Read More

Faithful readers of Retrospect may recall my story on the prompt Beaches, which included memories of two spring break trips I took three decades apart: a 1961 trip with my parents and sisters to Fort Lauderdale shortly after the movie Where the Boys Are came out; and a 1992 trip to Maui with my future second husband… Read More

When I was in junior high, the hairstyle to aim for was straight, shiny (see Breck ads), and rolled up  at the ends. My friend Linda always had perfect hair, a shoulder-length sheet ending in a neat hair-tube curving around the back of her neck. I had no success at this. Curlers would fall out in… Read More

Take Care of Your Sister I was my parents’ first child and had only one sibling,  my sister Laurie. My folks had always wanted a second child but after I was born my mother had trouble conceiving again.   Of course at the time I was too young to be told or to understand such things,… Read More

I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read music. I must have learned at about the same time I learned to read words, around three years old. It has always been a part of my life. I took piano lessons and then oboe lessons, but the thing I always liked the best was singing.… Read More

Bits and pieces of many trips lodged in my memory. Read More

We came off the Vineyard just before Labor Day, 2001 to a house in renovation chaos and our family in chaos. My in-laws had always spent the parting days of summer with us on the Vineyard, then the beginning of the fall with us in Newton, but Erv passed away the previous May. Gladys still… Read More