Stories With Heart And Soul 
Anne Lamott believes school lunch has nothing to do with nutritional values and everything to do with nurturing your onion skinned self esteem. Anne distills the whole school lunch dilemma in her book Bird By Bird, using these words. “It was really about opening our insides in front of everyone.” This must be why I
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My daughter Emma made a career choice we weren’t expecting. After two years of a pre-med academic path, she didn’t change her major, but she did change her mind. She decided to be a physician assistant instead. Emma graduated from PA school via Zoom last month. Emma went to Rhodes College to study neuroscience and prepare for
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To be real. Totally you is one of the best gifts you can give your children because it gives them permission to be true too. If my dad were alive, I would thank him for never acting like anyone else. Growing up I didn’t appreciate his authenticity because it included calling out posers and sharing
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Christmas is a pile of stresses with trauma looming on list-filled December days. The mall, really what could be worse? Clearly, lots could be worse, but getting side-checked and jostled on a Saturday afternoon is not my idea of a good time. Seeing clothing marked down to the bone and hanging akimbo makes me worry.
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I’ve always been single-minded, pooling all my energy into one goal. It’s a strategy that helped me attend a favorite college and land a dream job in advertising. When I was seven, I locked my father out of the car until he threw his cigarettes in a trash can. He begged me to let him
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Thanksgiving dinner was very good. It actually was. The contributing factors were size, ease and listening ears. It was just the four was of us, my children Matt and Emma and my husband Mark. This dialed the drama meter down significantly as there were fewer personalities to balance and fewer dishes to scrub. The four
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We’re having the littlest Thanksgiving tomorrow. Just the four of us, and I’m perfectly happy. I would love to have a bigger group, but the local relatives have other plans. They’re driving back from a house hunting trip on Thanksgiving Day. Cousin Rosemary can’t fly from California. She shattered her ankle skiing. Another cousin thinks
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They say there are no accidents. That is not true. I am a classic accident. Technically speaking, I am an only child born to Rita Marie Murray three months after her 18th birthday at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. This is not a joke. She told me I was a blue blood baby. I only
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I met an angel on a sidewalk in Harlem, NY. She’s a perfect memory of the ideal human experience. Let me explain why I love this woman. Some of us lick the edges of life. Others live with a sore patch, constantly rubbing the wound. Either keeping it fresh or making it ooze. Most of
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My mother’s love was big. Rita was the parent waving wildly from the audience with a toothy smile. In high school I messed up my solo in Oklahoma when I saw her arms fanning above her head. Other parents sat patiently, palms in their laps, and looked at the stage with neutral expressions. Rita couldn’t
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