I pick up the electric shaver. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I say to my Dad. I’ve never shaved a man before. My 82-year-old father sits in yet another hospital room, one of many he’s stayed in lately for symptoms of late-stage Parkinson’s disease. He’s unable to use his hands except for the most […]
Ever know you shouldn’t do something, but do it anyway? This happened to me recently when I happened to walk by my son watching a spooky movie about a possessed, haunted doll. I knew not to sit down. I’d remember that doll’s evil black eyes…and the way she could make her rocking chair move at […]
Lately I’ve had trouble shutting out the world. I’ve been longing to escape my over-fed, too-busy brain, this brain that can’t stop THINKING. Each day I’m bombarded with not only my problems, but the planet’s. I’m hooked into too many devices with too much multi-tasking. Yet the other day, I happened to watch a video […]
He’s sweet. He’s kind. He never holds a grudge. He takes nothing personally. He has no ego. He takes the high road. No, I’m not talking about spiritualist Eckhart Tolle, but I could be. My dog Simon is all these things but has one MAJOR flaw that’s driving me insane. Simon is 13-years-old and incontinent. […]
Dr. Christiane Northrup was on PBS recently–vivacious, intelligent, and fascinating as ever. She’s a wonderful role model, full of advice about growing older, especially for women. However, one thing she said perplexed me. “Never tell people your age,” she advised her audience. “Don’t celebrate your birthdays, even the milestones. Society will foist cultural conditioning on […]
With thoughts of future moving in our heads, my husband Randy and I face a house that needs serious purging. I won’t name names but one of us (*cough*) has his work cut out for him in terms of streamlining possessions. Randy and I recently started preliminary fighting dialogue on three main areas of contention… RANDY’S COLLECTIBLES: Me: Really? We need to […]
I’ve never been good with hospitals. I shiver when I walk their corridors, reading scary signs on doors—Blood Drawing, X-ray, and Pathology. I feel vulnerable, small, and human. And yet over the past month, as I’ve come to visit my father in this vast Veteran’s Hospital outside New Haven, CT, something strange is happening. […]
PUBLISHED IN THE HUFFINGTON POST, APRIL 14, 2017 On a bright, cloudless day in September 1983 I stood on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth 2, waving goodbye to no one in particular. I was 26-years-old and all around people threw streamers and shouted farewell to loved ones on the Manhattan pier below. Since this was […]
The other day my 24-year-old son Patrick invited me to watch a video featuring a band he had played with at a recent gig. When finished, my first response (part mother, part honest) was, “They’re good, but your band’s better.” My son gave me a disappointed look. “We’re not about who is better, Mom. […]
