This blog appeared in the New York Times on January 15, 2013. If you’d like to read it, please follow this link for the full text: New York Times, Face to Face With Mom in the Mirror
Family & Friends
You Jump… I Jump…
Saturday, September 22nd, 2012
I confess to feeling slightly foolish blogging about Titanic, but the phenomenon of Dakota and her pals going to see it in Imax 3-D – for their 34th lifetime viewing – set me to pondering what on earth could have precipitated that kind of devotion to a movie. OK. In the interest of full disclosure, [ Read More ]
Dakota/Class of 2012
Friday, September 14th, 2012
I’ve blogged so much about Dakota you probably already feel you know her, but maybe you don’t know her work yet, so I’d like to introduce you on the cusp of her graduation from Parsons. Of course, Colleges of Art are not quite like any others… Dakota’s cap and gown were fire engine red and [ Read More ]
What’s in a Name?
Saturday, July 7th, 2012
When I was a child, I thought of my mother’s sister Mary as the Dowager Empress of the World. She was tall and stately and would sit on her chair like a queen on a throne, her adoring daughters dancing attendance on her as if she thoroughly deserved it. In truth, she probably did, as [ Read More ]
The Moving Finger Writes…
Friday, February 24th, 2012
My childhood was spent in a haze of books and familial propriety. The small-town-America life, where children safely walked alone to school and dawdled their way home, lulled into daydreams by the sweetness of the neighbors’ gardens, is probably gone now, but the visuals are clear to me still. A wall of rambling roses at [ Read More ]
Memories of My Father
Friday, December 23rd, 2011
I’ve been thinking about my Father a lot this Holiday Season. Missing him… wishing he were here with me and Dakota to watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time. Papa was a rare bird. He laughed a lot and taught me useful things… how to hang storm windows… how to recite poetry with [ Read More ]
My New Year’s Resolution
Friday, December 23rd, 2011
I can’t think of a better New Year’s Resolution than to try to live up to the gentle truths of my father’s philosophy, so I’d like to offer them to you in this little poem I wrote about him, both as a loving remembrance, and as a tribute to the kind of old fashioned values [ Read More ]
Christmas Past
Friday, December 16th, 2011
The ghosts of Christmas past Wandered by my tree just now A cup of tea in hand, I stopped To admire the sweetness of the nearly trimmed tree And there you were My Mommy and Daddy Young and shiny, hopeful as when On Christmas morning I’d open the presents You’d saved to buy.
Holiday Happiness Starts Now…
Friday, November 25th, 2011
I love the holidays with all my heart. I wait all year, anticipatory as a child, to be able to play Christmas carols without apologies. Truth is, from November through New Year’s, my life takes on an incandescence undreamed of in the rest of my work-a-day year. Music, decorations, lights, tinsel, a lifetime’s worth of [ Read More ]
My Aunt’s Perfect Blueberry Pie
Friday, November 4th, 2011
I was blessed with a family of great and merry women, who were kind enough to live into their 90s (one to 105!) so I could enjoy their wisdom, laughter and strength for much of my life… and also learn how to make great pies! I know we can’t recreate the best of our past [ Read More ]