I pick up the phone on what my Florida friends say is a miserable, cold, Maine winter day. My good friend, my age, says, “I’m in the ER with my husband. He woke up with no memory of anything that happened last month. The doctors suspect a stroke.” I say, “I am so sorry. I… Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day. We pass newspaper stands in pharmacies: covid numbers up, climate temperatures up and down, stock market down. Messages of hate. We read sour headlines, then lift our gaze to the sweets. Candy hearts with messages of love. Chocolate. Sometimes I don’t know what to do, how to be in this up and down… Continue Reading
Sometimes we don’t know, or want to know, big worldly truths. International politics. Fast-moving viruses. The Earth’s climate crises. And there are smaller personal truths that we also cannot always, or do not, want to see. I acknowledge one here: I am forgetting things. Names. Words. It’s as if “my friend’s name is Grace” or… Continue Reading
This week, I reread holiday cards and saw in many of them, “here’s hoping for an easier 2022.” Packing up hope messages, I remembered a lecture I gave years ago in South Carolina. I stood ready to speak, the “mindfulness woman” there to teach “some things that may be new to these fifty people,” advised… Continue Reading
Flakes falling. Fires aglow. Baking. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Not for all of us. Or, “Tis the season to be jolly.” Not always. At dawn recently, skies had already spit rain, sleet, then snow. I, not with my usual jump-out-of-bed smile, drove to a coffee shop, “to get out of the… Continue Reading
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