My dear friend Reverend Marian Starnes was a spiritual powerhouse. A compassionate healer, a gifted medium, a loving friend to any in need. She founded The Brigade of Light and on the advice of an Angel named Gary (I’m not making this up) bought a property of 250 acres of pristine beauty on a [ Read More ]
Do the people you love own certain times of your day – stalwart custodians of some magical clock? I never meet a day or a coffee pot without remembering the sound of my father’s voice in the early morning. I see him standing by the coffee pot, his greeting optimistic as dawn, cup in hand [ Read More ]
I’m in love with my dog. There’s really no other way to express it. He’s a former pound-puppy, rescued from the Humane Society at 5 months, now grown to 120 pounds of pure, unadulterated love and devotion. When Dakota went off to college five years ago, and my nest was disturbingly empty for the first [ Read More ]
It occurred to me today, as I found myself standing in the middle of the family plot talking to the people I love who are no longer with me except in spirit and memory, that anyone not Irish might consider it odd to find comfort in a cemetery. Yet, I always do. I’d gone there [ Read More ]
I have a beloved sister, Conny, nearly 13 years younger than I. We’re quite different in appearance, profession, proclivities, talents and even in sexual orientation, but in our hearts, we’re pretty much cut from the same cloth. We’ve worked together in one way or another, for a lifetime, certain this is not the first lifetime [ Read More ]
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
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 ]
I ran across this poem quite by accident and was so touched by it, I’d like to pass it on to you this Memorial Day. It reminded me of a family incident a few years ago, that showed me how easy it is to overlook the true heroes around us, or perhaps, simply not know [ 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 ]