“Inside every older person is a younger person – wondering what the hell happened.” —Cora Harvey Armstrong “You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul’s own doing.” —Marie Stopes The arrival of a brand New Year (always a treat to be able [ Read More ]
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 ]
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 ]
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.
A friend chided me gently at lunch the other day for being naïve at my advanced age, and tending to believe the best of people. At first, I was hurt, then I tried to decide if she might be trying in her kindly way, to help me. A friend’s eye is a good mirror, they [ Read More ]
Life breaks everyone’s heart somehow, somewhere in time. Betrayal or death or illness or failure or war or most any tragedy can do the deed. The question is what happens then? In that dark night of the spirit, how do we live till morning? How do we resilient, courageous, fragile, faltering humans take our licks [ Read More ]
My daughter Dakota is just about to graduate from college, and I have the awful maternal fear that I might have forgotten to tell her something that’s really important. So I made a list. I know the accumulation of wisdom is a lifelong task and can’t be hurried or culled from someone else’s hands – [ Read More ]
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 ]
I spent a lot of years in the Beauty/Fashion industry… I starved myself like everyone else did. Looking beautiful and sexy was a different kind of nourishment, and I made the tradeoff gleefully. But looking back, I’ve had lots of second thoughts about the unrealistic dream of beauty we’ve left our daughters. Real women don’t [ Read More ]
Have you ever looked in the mirror and just wanted to cry? I did that one recent morning, having had too little sleep and far too little coffee to cope with revelation. My body wasn’t any of the things I’d wanted it to be… that was clear from the get to. Not tall as Julia [ Read More ]