About a year ago, a friend who’s a fellow widow wrote on Facebook about the then-current phase of her grieving. She allowed me to quote her here, without identification. Her words: “… it happens, even two years down the road, this stage: the ‘stay at home, don’t want to see anyone, or do anything’ stage. “As any of you who know… Read More
I’d had friends over last Friday, for dinner. A couple of the dishes I’d served them required a little fresh dill. Now, you can’t buy a little dill. You buy it by the bunch. That bunch is usually, especially this time of year, preposterously large. This is problematical. I live alone, except for when my boyfriend comes up from New York to spend a few… Read More
My long out-of-print children’s book WIND ROSE just may be re-issued. Unlikely: outest of out chances, longest of long shots. Still, I needed to find a copy to send to the perhaps-publisher. I went to the shelf where I keep copies of books I’ve written in my (this is unbelievable to me) 47-year career as a professional freelance writer (my first… Read More
It’s the softest sound in the world, and one only occasionally hears it: a flower falling. This morning, sitting in the right place, I heard it. A single foxglove blossom dropped from the arrangement I had placed on a table yesterday. It’s such a small sound, but it stayed with me all day. Until I finally asked myself, ” Why?”… Read More
Last year, at the get-together after the memorial service for poet Miller Williams, his daughter, singer/songwriter/musician Lucinda Williams, said to me, “You know what’s strange? You know when I cried? I cried the day my father told me he was through writing poetry. That he could no longer do it. So far I haven’t cried at all since his actual death, but… Read More
“That’s not the name of the song!” my father, Maurice, would say, mock-irritated. “It’s ‘Theme from the Sandpiper’, ‘Theme from the Sandpiper’!” But Charlotte, my mother, would merely give her half-smile, inscrutable. Like almost everyone else, she called the song “The Shadow of Your Smile.” That’s a line from the lyrics. The most memorable line, the one which everyone who’s ever… Read More
Oh oh… Surpassingly strange, strong, moving, out-of-the-blue moment tonight. The words I will try to find for it can only inadequately express the experience. I was at a yoga class which I take once a week, on Tuesday night, called restorative yoga. This is the one fitness class of any kind, anywhere, that I’ve ever taken, where at some level… Read More
…that particular morning, that little girl in Atlanta did have a question. A real question, and, as I have said, she asked it with solemnity and gravitas. Her manner made me wonder later if she, literal as all children are, had perhaps been puzzling over it for weeks, as I remember puzzling over why “witches” were in the Pledge of Allegiance. (“And to the Republic, for witches stand…”)
“Do you believe,” that little girl asked me, “that it’s true that you really can’t judge a book by its cover?”
Walking yesterday, up near Frazier's sugar shack here in Vermont, I heard an animal rustle in the underbrush edging the woods by the gravel road. Though I stood stock-still and watched, I couldn't see what it was. Too large for a chipmunk or a squirrel, smaller by far than a deer, I was left only with the sudden sound of… Read More
Today, coming down to the hill towards the pond, beginning my morning walk, two animals — one large, one small — standing in the middle of the gravel road. I caught my breath, stood stock-still, blinked and waited, blinking a few times to clear my not-so-good vision so I could identify them. Ah. A white-tailed deer, and – what was… Read More
I began writing these words on Easter Sunday, as Christians celebrated the triumphant arc of their spiritual year, when Christ rises from death. But resurrection itself belongs to everyone, regardless of belief, or non-belief. Here in much of America, Easter-time coincides with the year's resurrection. The alarm clock set by the spin and wobble of this particular planet on which… Read More
“I suppose you’ll live here one day?” Aunt Dot said. A statement; a question. She gave a quick, birdlike glance at me, then looked away. Waiting, I naturally assumed, for an answer. But how could I answer when I wasn’t sure what the question was? She was sitting, that night, on the wooden chair with the woven seat, near the… Read More
