The red field poppy is an annual flower that blooms between May and August. Its seeds are scattered on the breeze and can lie dormant in the ground for years.…
I write to think about questions that preoccupy me. In Landslide’s case, I am looking at love and loss, and how we find the resilience to overcome. By the time…
Husband’s mother and sister died within three months of each other. Now, we are taking on the care of Grandpa, Husband’s father. Grandpa’s faculties are receding. Three years ago, Grandpa…
Another thing that Grandpa can no longer do with us is share family dinners. It used to be that Grandpa would come late afternoons for supper, arriving about an hour…
Long after Grandpa retired from Northeastern, Grandpa continued to update his textbooks to reflect changing civil codes and developing technologies. He worked with his favorite PhD student to craft clever…
Grandpa made beef stew today! In our family, Grandpa is a renowned beef stew chef. Grandpa started making beef stew when he took over the cooking from Grandma. Grandma cooked…
I knew I wanted to marry Husband by our second date. It took Husband a wee longer to figure the same. Until we were married, Husband and I always lived…
I believe in elves. I believe in the forest-living, magical creatures perhaps with pointed ears, perhaps with long straight silken silvery hair; certainly, with silent feet and a quiet, luminescent…
Most of my life I have known my father-in-law as Grandpa, because Husband and I had children quite quickly after getting married. He has been a lovely Grandpa and a…
Life is tenacious. This thought first struck me in 2001 when I read the memoir Shadow of the Sun, by the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. The memoir is a collection…
That sly Grandpa got me! I was multitasking – making apple crumble, playing Scrabble with Grandpa, and returning emails. I was playing my words quickly, and without much attention. Youngest…
Sometimes, life is stranger than fiction. Today was one of those days. It started in the morning by a call from Grandpa’s senior living facility reporting that Grandpa was wandering…
Grandpa’s shrieking about arrest was funny in a macabre sort of way, but mainly it was profoundly upsetting. I had spent probably 30-40 days of my life with Joan, many…
Maybe we are all interconnected, the seven billion of us on this planet now, all the people who have come before, and all who will come. Link by link, perhaps…
Husband got cancer over twenty years ago, when my first two children were fifteen months and three weeks old. He underwent extensive radiation and chemotherapy followed by a bone-marrow transplant.…
Now that we are older, we know many people who have faced cancer or who have journeyed through it with a close friend or family member. Back when Husband was…