It is an ongoing joke that I married my husband for his family hamantaschen recipe. That was over 30 years ago.

There is one in every family, right? The great uncle who went out for cigarettes and never came back; the relative who raised her much younger adopted sister who looks remarkably like herself;

An old adage, but how does it apply to the current trend of eReaders? When I go into someone’s home I look around at what is on display. It is a great way to get to know something about who lives there.

An entire life can change in the blink of an eye. This is ever more true when you become a parent. I remember one day when I was pregnant with our first child. I was grocery shopping. While I was leaning over a display case to check out the produce someone took my cart.

This weekend is my 25th college reunion. A time for returning to old haunts, reintroducing oneself to former class mates and reminiscing with long lost friends. A weekend filled with all sorts of activities, planned events and impromptu gatherings. Sounds great! And yet,

Dear Children, When you think of me, and I know you do (I am your mother after all), I hope you think of me with fondness and love. That is certainly the way I think of you. I am not saying that I don’t understand that there will be times when you are angry or

Perhaps it was time for another revelation, or perhaps it was just a brain glitch while drying my hair this morning, but I realized that I don’t really have a personal mission. In life, maybe, but not on a smaller scale. I fill my time with

A sign of hope in an unfortunate situation: That is the definition of a silver lining. That is what I have found here.
While all that has occurred in Boston since that first blast at the marathon is far greater than “an unfortunate situation”,

Yesterday I woke to an eerie silence punctuated by the occasional bird or police siren. This morning I am greeted by the sounds of rain hitting the roof and birds singing in the eaves. Yesterday I spent the day inside, sheltering in place,

Pesach is a time during which Jews scramble to find alternatives to the starches they normally eat. What to do in place of bread, rice, noodles? Instead of focusing on substitutes this year I would like to try to focus on reducing the amount of that sort of thing I eat;

Sometimes mundane things can trigger big thoughts, like this morning when I opened the fridge. I saw the juice bottle in the door and noticed there was very little juice left in it. Not enough to fill the smallest glass in the house. Not even enough to

Daylight Savings Time is an odd thing. We set our clocks ahead to allow us to take advantage of more daylight during waking hours. This shift is somewhat lost on me as I tend not to have normal waking hours and am often up during the wee hours of the morning.

Several years ago I helped my mother-in-law move out of a home she had lived in for over 40 years. Even though the move was not unexpected her final move was done quickly, inelegantly, and yes, sloppily. While I had made arrangements with people to

My 25th college reunion is approaching. Whether or not I will attend has more to do with timing and finances than anything else, but I can’t help but wonder what I would talk about with friends and classmates long forgotten.

Today was my birthday. My 47th birthday to be exact and I will admit to not having been too excited about it. Not because I am unhappy about getting older; I don’t think I have ever been distressed by the numbers. It is just that I find birthdays to come with an enormous

This morning brought terrible news. My friends’ son, away at college, died from a seizure and was found yesterday morning by his roommate. This is a tragic loss, for his parents, his siblings and his many friends. And while his death, their loss, is

When my husband and I moved into our first apartment together he was in grad school. I was not yet working so I was in charge of unpacking while he was at class. After several days of sorting through boxes I noticed that he had placed a small brown vase full

When I was younger, sometime in grade school, one of my favorite things to do on a late summer afternoon was stick a book in my back pocket and climb up my grandfather’s apple tree. There was a limb just high enough up that I could perch there out of sight and

For someone who often feels she hasn’t done much I have had a lot of previous lives. I was a classroom teacher. I revamped the recruiting department of an ocean-going educational program and I was a regional rep for a program of a national museum. I was a

When I was a kid one of my favorite foods was pork chops. I loved when we would have them for supper. I would even request pork chops for my birthday dinner. They are the first meat I can remember learning how to cook. But around the age of thirteen I stopped