Category: Uncategorized

Noticing my tendency to bare my soul with everyone I meet, my husband Dave’s Catholic mother said, I “talk to worms on the street.” Though I’ve never been to confession and I’m as candid with therapists as mail carriers, honesty has nothing to do with Judgement Day. Barlow had been a dairy farm, possibly a…

“Molto Bello Bambino,” said an Italian maid pinching my cheek as a pair of homely squabs blinked at me from the balcony of the Hotel Flora in Rome. All my memories of being dragged through Europe for six weeks by my grandparents include pigeons. While taking in as many historic sites possible, at age eight,…

“How much further,” my mother asked, waiting for the light to change in front of the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Hospital. After increasing miles of fields and woodlands, unmarred by human exploits, Barlow was only a half hour beyond the looming brick madhouse, notorious for its groundbreaking lobotomies. Though my mother disowned her people, and my…

After my heart attack twenty years ago, I refused physical therapy and sat scowling like a stray dog on a hospital bed with a sandbag on my groin. The cardiologist went in through my femoral artery and positioned six rice-sized, lobster trap-looking stents in my coronary arteries which I’d consider the rest of my life.…

“Can I get some skates before the ice melts,” I asked my mother after Peggy Fleming brought home the gold, figure skating in the ’68 winter Olympics. Mothers in my Connecticut neighborhood bought their thirteen-year old’s new bikes, flippers, polo shirts, tennis rackets and 8-track tape players, but not mine. Though she grew up poor…

My sister and I share enduring memories of staying with strange families while my parents travelled. Why wouldn’t we appreciate chalets in Vermont, summer homes on the Cape, Nantucket or off the coast of Maine and their old-monied owners, nostalgic for previous eras who offered us mousy sleeping bags in rambling porches, boat houses and…

Should one bid Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to someone like me? Less jolly than usual by others Hell bent on making this time of year seem joyous, I normally sigh rather than discuss making any season artificially bright. I like the dark and would rather be understood, than shamed for feeling more estranged than…

Should one bid Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to someone like me? Less jolly than usual by others Hell bent on making this time of year seem joyous, I normally sigh rather than discuss making any season artificially bright. I like the dark and would rather be understood, than shamed for feeling more estranged than…

Though everyone else thought my parents were beguiling and attractive, to me they were Martians. Everything about them was challenging, beginning with their names. I cringed hearing the name “Dick” for obvious reasons, and “Ruby” sounded painful like a rueful, bloody stone. Their ominous presence caused brooding book titles to mysteriously appear in front of…

“Sit down aunty Iris,” Rory Halifax insisted, rowing their overloaded dinghy after his aging British aunt tried to stand with her martini. “Do sit,” Mr. Halifax said, beseeching his batty sister who rarely could be reached. “Mind the captain darling,” Mrs. Halifax added, recapping protocol, while yanking Iris down on Rory’s younger brother Finn, without…