Mom always goes first. She’s spent time — who knows, maybe all week — getting organized for her Saturday Zoom share and needs to get it out there before she loses her train of thought. We are scrupulous in getting right to her once everyone […]
All posts filed under: essay
Down to the bone
After raising 5 kids and packing them off to college, my cousin Karen cut her hair, threw a few things in a backpack and trekked around Europe for a while on her own. I was floored. No make-up? No blow dryer? That someone could travel […]
What’s really going on in our mind
I have bipolar. However, what I’m really having a harder time reconciling about myself is being one of those people with bad allergies. Honestly, I just finished coughing my way through the last 8 weeks because I wasn’t going to be a person with allergies […]
Unleashed
There is something in us that comes out when the environment changes, like that funny thing that always happened in school when the power went off. Under cover of darkness, mild mayhem would erupt. We would all start ooooohing and shouting. Excited tusseling would break out. It was like […]
The next thing
When a friend’s engineer husband decided to go back to school to become a lawyer, for some reason I couldn’t get over his decision to dive into three grueling years. This sounded just awful to me — they had two young kids at home. And […]
Leaving your mark
There is a lady who walks her dog on State Street in Portland every day. When she gets to Mercy Hospital, she takes a little detour so she can place a painted rock on the hospital’s front entrance steps or the guardrail going down to […]
Crazy loops
I’ve walked under the branches of this tree on my walk for the last 12 years, but it wasn’t until just a few days before the new year that I noticed the loop in that low-hanging one. The way it took that sudden bend up […]
Making sandwiches
When my daughter was in high-school she worked at Bagel Central, an iconic establishment in downtown Bangor. Laid back and sunny with floor to ceiling windows and wire baskets of bagels; racks of Danish, rugelach, muffins and cookies; and glass cases of endless desserts, spinach […]
The problem with bragging
I embarrassed myself in a meeting the other day having, once again, found the opportunity to brag about my sister who is a doctor in a high-level position at Mayo Clinic. (The Mayo Clinic.) I’m very proud of her. And I’m also clearly not above […]
The Great Balloon Escape
One of life’s big existential mysteries grabs up a 3-year-old, his middle-aged grandmother and a random old guy walking by. We drove up under the canopy of the retirement community, opened the trunk and the passenger side door and grabbed the first load of birthday […]
Scene 5 — Guard Dog
Growing up I went by Liz, except for one day in 7th grade when I went by Lizard to Jeff Humphries. I was not a fan of his momentary nickname for me, but I was even less a fan of the period when I actually […]
Scene 4 — Rabbit
Greg Pickle was the first kid I knew who had real life tragedy strike. We were in third grade when his mom crashed the car and killed his little sister and crippled him. He would forever after walk with a limp. And I would look […]
Be cool. 