On the first day of a recent Christmas past, my truelove gave to me… low frequency therapeutic equipment. The product, also called the HBL-502, was “similar to as seen on TV,” according to the information on the box which also included this: “Broad and profound Chinese traditional medicine deducts infinite technological apotheosis.” This could mean that the HBL-502 represented the … Read More
About This Blog
“Welcome! The posts and essays you’ll find here cover the past several years of my travels as a writer, reader, walker, mother, wanna-be gardner, and lover of life large and small. If you like what you see, let’s continue the conversation. Just go to any of my posts and sign up by clicking on the Subscribe To My Blog button … Read More
Old Yeller and The Repo Man: Thanksgiving 1986
The movie is Old Yeller and it plays out on the television in the corner of the hospital room. My son, then eleven, watches from the bed through eyes compressed nearly shut by a sinus infection. An IV beeps. Antibiotic seeps into his arm as it has for nearly four days without appreciable effect. The father and the neighbor are … Read More
One Thing
“He never knew when it was coming.” I learned last week that there is one thing about me my husband would change if he could. Not the size of my breasts. Not my inability to control myself around a bag of corn chips. Not the way I start reading his library books before he is finished with them, or try … Read More
Life Happens
“It was amazing how you could get so far from where you’d planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.” (Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye) If things had been going according to plan, I’d be writing this post from Switzerland, on the last leg of a three-week trip that was to begin with a flight … Read More
Limoncello Lessons…Please!
Okay, foodies and mixology mavens. I need your help. I made my first ever batch of limoncello and it looks like this: In case it isn’t obvious from the photograph above, my limoncello is not yellow. A sip sometimes yields hints of Pledge cleaner underscored by notes of blecchh. Although I did try it again today and it was, if I … Read More
A Moment of Silence
On Monday, May 26th, the clock will strike 3 p.m. one time zone at a time. Everywhere across the U.S. people will fall silent, together or alone, to remember those who died at war. A moment of silence can be powerful. I recall this very clearly when the day after the towers fell, my husband and I were in Italy, … Read More
Monday Letters
It’s five o’clock on Monday morning and my mother sits in bed, knees up, a pad against her thighs, her second cup of coffee steaming within easy reach. Her pen flies across the page in front of her leaving behind a trail of thoughts that have been on her mind for days, minutes, or take shape as she writes. I … Read More
How to Love a Loquat
It’s spring here in San Diego. The sky is blue, the temperatures are nudging eighty degrees, and I am working hard to come up with all the ways we can eat our loquats before they shrivel into black hairy clumps. I realize that there may be those reading these words who are dealing with highs of forty degrees, mud, losing … Read More
About A Boy
Today, April 20, is about Easter. It is also about a boy. The boy in this picture came into my life on April 20, 1975. He doesn’t look this way any more. He’s taller, his shoulders sometimes hunch when the world gets a little much for him, there are a few lines at the corners of his eyes when he … Read More