Today I listened, for the first time in too many years to count, to an album that can only be associated with my mother. She was in that nether world between living and dying. At the wheel of my little red (station) wagon, I’d pop that thing called a cassette into the tape player. The year was 1993, … [Read more...] about How we hear music
Gifts
The first week of 2016 found me at a cozy local restaurant, four friends who do our best to keep ties from disappearing completely even when time and circumstance bring separation. One of the women, a gifted poet/photographer/visual artist handed each of us a small box, wrapped and ribboned in her … [Read more...] about Gifts
1 Car, 2 Cars, Red Car, New Car
I don’t really remember the first, first car my family bought other than that apparently my parents listened to almost five-year-old me when I requested “fire engine red” and that we bought it from the same car dealer from whom we would buy two of our subsequent cars. I do remember the … [Read more...] about 1 Car, 2 Cars, Red Car, New Car
Gratitude
In an essay by Joan Didion that I go back to again and again, she writes: “there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.” Takes a certain flair with … [Read more...] about Gratitude
Ain’t too proud to beg
I'm stretched out in bed, 9:30 p.m., a weeknight. A little early for me but it's the stretching out that I crave. To lie back, my neck propped against a trio of pillows. Recline. A word that hums, not so much directive as invitation: sink back. Let the shoulders relax, show the heart how … [Read more...] about Ain’t too proud to beg
Talk less, say more
I have a dream . . . in which I’m sitting at a kitchen table with my cousins—very close cousins, whom I love dearly—and we’re reminiscing, schmoozing, laughing about old times at another kitchen table, in a small Brooklyn apartment, as mythical as it was real. We tease each other about the kids we … [Read more...] about Talk less, say more
