Aunt Kay hugging Matt and Emma
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With a high ponytail, a pressed white coat, and a clipboard. This is how I imagine my daughter Emma. She’s standing in an exam room, a friendly physician assistant, but I can’t talk to her because I’m gone. Dead. The thought is so overwhelming that my mind is ice. In seconds a familiar anxiety tells
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My mom cooked with no directions and fancy ingredients we couldn’t afford. She liked to finish a dish with a bottle of red wine aimed at the pot and and tilted in a carefree pour. For the most part things turned out OK except when she made my school lunch. Her idea of a good
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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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