There was a small and rugged stationery store in the 1960s on East 84th Street, where I sometimes went with Mom when she ordered Crane note cards on heavy cream stock engraved with her initials. I remember it well because it was the first time I saw an adult with...

Yesterday began with deception, as my husband and I loaded our car with empty suitcases and his golf clubs still here from our last trip. Our apartment has inadequate space for luggage, so we store them elsewhere. We leashed up our eight-year-old cockapoo Walter as well. He was scheduled for...

Recently, I recovered from the diaper bag. Before the babies were born, I carried a small purse, containing wallet, comb, lipstick, blush, a few loose tissues and keys. With the first baby came the diaper bag: a vinyl-lined upholstered sack with numerous compartments and quilted "changing pad" filled with so...

A few months ago, my daughter Ellie and I were in a Northampton, Massachusetts gallery that sells glass, crafts and jewelry. Ellie was showing me the wedding band that her fiancé Larry chose: A broad band made of palladium that will endure as Larry hefts Goshen stones to create landscape...

So here's a trick question for you all. What's worse: Being dressed in black Lycra, exiting the gym (and feeling oh so sassy) and falling flat on your knee, or being dressed in black Lycra, exiting the gym (and feeling oh so sassy) and falling flat on your knee in...

The woman makes her home in the doorway of the church on my street. She sits on post office crates, and is surrounded by cloth and plastic bags filled with her belongings. I have seen her bathe in the fountain on the next block. I have never seen her sleep....

Jimmy Dean died. Really, I didn't know his music well. When he became popular, I was around 10. Then, in the 1970's when he had a TV show and more hit songs, I was busy with folk singers, protests, and poetry. Back then, country music didn't appeal to me. Funny...

Headline news! Breaking news! After 40 years of marriage, Al and Tipper Gore Are Calling It Quits! Third Party Involvement? Is Al Having an Affair? Does Al Have a Younger Tipper Doppelganger? What Does It Mean Financially? Forty years of the Gore marriage -- crises, careers, children, grandchildren -- now...

Yesterday my husband called at five o'clock to say he was leaving the office. This is a man who never leaves the office at five o'clock. He leaves our apartment around 7:30 each morning and returns each night at (the earliest) seven-thirty. The joke is that he works a half...

There is a restaurant that sits on the shore of New York City's East River. As a matter of fact, it sits so close that one feels as though one is nearly floating in the river herself. Mother's Day was so windy that the river's currents flowed wildly and visibly....

I am not certain if I noticed the near perfection of the cloudless turquoise sky before
or after the towers fell on September 11th. I can't recall whether or not I awakened that morning and thought it was a beautiful day. I did question, after turning on the news,...

On Saturday night we went to a wedding reception in Tribeca, a once unlikely area of New York City to be considered residentially-chic. These days, it's brimming with bistros and upscale restaurants. Venerable buildings hold loft-style apartments where new windows and modern lobbies are the only hint at opulence. It...

The year before I graduated high school, Betty Friedan stormed The Oak Room, that male bastion of a bar at New York City's Plaza Hotel. I'd walked past that mysterious room, inhaling the cigarette and cigar smoke that wafted through its doors when I went to dinner with my parents...

Today is St. Patrick's Day and on every St. Patrick's Day for as long as I can remember, my husband has worn a green tie. Typically, he wears a rather bold Kelly green tie, but this morning he wore one more of the pastel variety - and I noticed.

"That's...

Yesterday I watched the years from 1952 -1976 speed by in roughly two hours. Until a month ago, these were the missing years among reels of 16 MM movie film, finally unearthed in a wooden wine crate on the back of a closet shelf in my parents' old apartment. I...

When I was a child, our family spent a lot of time in Hollywood Beach, FL. My grandparents had a small ranch house about a half block from the beach with a detached garage that they converted into a guest house. The main house had a television recessed into a...

I knew it was not a good thing to do - to read a blog someone wrote about my mother's funeral. But I did. And pretty much right before I went to bed last night which was another bad idea. I was forewarned: the blog mentioned that my mother had...

I have lost track of time in the last few weeks -- the result of moving my father from his home of 52 years to his new apartment in New York City. It is simple to say that it was physically taxing. It is simplistic to say that the move...

Oscar Wilde said "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." A sound theory that prevails as we are suspended in the moment, the past, and in what we believe to be our destinies.

On Saturday morning October 31 as my husband and I drove upstate for an overnight respite,...

Time colors and shades memories in many ways. So, although I think that I remember clearly the day that my family moved into our "new" apartment on November 1957, I probably don't.

I recall the room I shared with my younger brother: The glaring circular florescent light on the ceiling...