I sat on the sands of a crowded South Carolina beach last weekend with an old R.E.M. song playing in my mind. I figured that everyone would assume I was listening to my iPod (don't own one), as I bobbed my head to the beat, singing along with Michael Stipes:...

My son has a job as a lifeguard this summer and today, I drove him to work. Though he now has his driver's license, he does not yet have his own car, so for the time being we must share mine, and he is being a good sport about it....

When my son, our youngest, began kindergarten, I sat down every morning for two weeks and cried. I felt overwhelming sorrow. I looked like a complete idiot. I sat in puddles of my own tears.

The time of spending my days sitting with my son on a curbside watching...

When I was a young girl, my mother would open the front door of our home in the evenings, tilt her head to look at the sky and say, "Look at the moon!" Instead, I would look at her face. And I would see pure joy. At the time, I...

I discovered Crocs when I was in my 30s. I would wear them to walk the dog or to work in the yard and even to my children's bus stop, where other young mothers stood in more fashionable footwear. And though I did understand that my shoes were not the...

James Taylor released a song in 1976 called, "Nothing Like a Hundred Miles." Whenever I'd hear it, I longed for the road and for the sight of that yellow line disappearing behind me in my rear-view mirror. I loved the refrain: "There's nothing like a hundred miles between me and...

I had the privilege of touring college campuses last week with my teenage son. I didn't see it this way at first; in fact, I thought it was a dreadful way to spend spring break. I know I'm not suppose to think that, or God forbid, say it, since touring...

I met my husband in the early 1980s while we were in college. He was a DJ at the campus radio station and sometimes I would visit him during his shows. I can remember just how he looked sitting at the microphone flanked by two turntables and surrounded by four...

My daughter is home from college for the weekend. I see her walking towards me from across the room and for a moment, I am looking at myself when I was a girl of 20. The sight of her as a young me is so startling that I catch my...

My husband has grown a beard. I've known him for 30 years and he has not once, not ever, tried to grow any type of facial hair at all.

Our 20-year-old daughter became concerned when she saw it. She said that surely he would shave soon; it is so unlike...

I remember standing in my kitchen as a young mother, staring out the window and saying out loud to no one in particular, "there's got to be a better way." I had recently walked away from my career and much to my own surprise, decided to stay home with my...

On the night of the Golden Globe Awards, I watched the news as my husband cooked lemon-garlic pork chops and mustard greens. Our plan was a quiet dinner. We had no intention of watching the awards show; it's really not our thing. But during a commercial break from the news,...

It's New Year's Eve and my husband and I are at home. We are dressed for the evening in our favorite sweats, soft slippers and fuzzy socks. We sit in front of the fireplace as our dinner simmers on the stove. The food smells good and the fire is warm....

In the late afternoons and into the early evenings as the sun lowers and the sky darkens, my children move towards our lighted Christmas tree. They sit as close to it as they possibly can, with their laptops and their iPods and their earphones;...

This will be my 51st Christmas. When I look back on all of the gifts that I have received over the years there are a few that are my all-time favorites:

A two-day TV rental: My husband and I were living in a second-floor apartment. We were in our...

It's almost Thanksgiving so I climb the stairs to our attic in search of a silver shoebox. I find it stacked between the plastic bag full of Easter baskets and the cardboard box stuffed with Christmas lights. Instead of shoes, my silver box now holds a small straw turkey and...

My husband and I are crossing a bridge to a resort island for a fall weekend getaway. It's just the two of us in the car and we take in the sight of salt marshes stretched out beneath us and sailboats on the horizon. It is a familiar beauty, this...

Today I decided to watch college football with my husband. I actually don't much like football. I don't even fully understand football. But my daughter is in college and my son soon will be too so watching it seems like the appropriate thing to do. My husband has a competitive...

Today my 17-year-old son offered to drive my husband and me to visit our daughter at college. It is only a 90 minute drive from our home. I suggested the trip this morning over breakfast and our son told us that yes, he would like to go, and that we...

It's a cool morning with the first hint of fall in the air so I drink my coffee outside on our back patio. I look at our overgrown rose bushes and thinning mulch beds but what I see is my children when they were young. I see them helping us...