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...

When my husband left the apartment this morning, he was wearing fresh cologne, a dark suit and crisp white shirt without a tie (the tie was rolled up in his pocket for "later"). Every time he wears that suit I ask if it's new. Then he opens the jacket, glances...

My husband and I spent the weekend in New Hope, Pennsylvania. A strange place for me to re-visit -- I spent several weekends there back in the early 1970s with a boyfriend whose grandparents owned an inn on the Delaware River in a bordering town. I remember how we borrowed...

The kitchen in our old house was a large room with planked wooden floors and a wood-burning stove. It was hardly state-of-the-art. The regular stove was basic - four burners and one oven. The sink was stainless and shallow. The dishwasher was old, and often needed coaxing. The counters were...

My grandfather died in 1986. I remember him as a strong and strapping man. I believe that he was brilliant and passionate, and yet others have told me that he had a tendency towards arrogance: That was a side of him I never saw -- or didn't notice. Maybe it...

I remember the days when my children were small and my greatest fear was losing them.
We've all had those moments as we stand on the supermarket checkout line with our child beside us, admonishing them distractedly as they pull down candies from the shelves. We turn around, prepared...

Who really knows exactly what happened in the Sanford marriage? Probably only that hapless fly on the wall. According to both Mark and Jenny Sanford, difficulties were brewing long before the governor's emotional and public meltdown.

Romantics might argue that he really did find his soul mate in Maria...

If only the dead could speak. Instead, as in the case of Diane Schuler who killed eight people including herself on the Taconic Parkway last weekend, the living are speaking for her. Clearly, they didn't know all of her. They say what people frequently say when interviewed after a tragedy,...

Our youngest has found an apartment with two college friends. A true three-bedroom (a "find" in New York City), he is preparing to move out come mid-August. Yesterday, he was "stressed out" after spending yet another day searching for the perfect space -- the "stressed out" part came after finding...

This past week, without a state occasion or major event, was the first time in as long as I can remember that my three children were at the same table at once. Stepping back, it's an interesting study. Have the dynamics changed among the three? In some ways, yes. The...

Last week, I had a brainstorm. I took a bottle of wine and two glasses to the rooftop terrace of our apartment building, and texted my husband as he walked home from the subway: "Meet me on the roof."

Rather than come straight home, it might be that proverbial breath...

We've had two family dinners since last Sunday. Family dinners except for the absence of my daughter and her boyfriend which is far more than just an "except." There was a significant gap at the tables for me, although given the level of my daughter's happiness, where and with whom...

My husband took the week off. I can't recall the last time he did that. He's taken a day off here and there, and has missed only two days of work since we married: once when he had shoulder surgery and another time when he had a stomach virus. Oh,...

Every Memorial Day weekend from the time I can remember, my mother packed us up for a summer rental -- usually a house near the sea, and for two summers to a 1932 pre-fabricated Sears Roebuck house in the "country." In 1971, she bought her own summer house. For me,...

The cab driver who took me from the train station in Springfield, Massachusetts to Northampton, Massachusetts on Monday morning had two very authentic-looking green eyes tattooed on the back of his bald head. He also drove with both hands off the wheel (was he using his knees?) while he talked...

On Tuesday, my husband and I went to a mass at St. Catherine's for our friend Joe who died too young one year ago Memorial Day weekend. St. Catherine's is one of New York City's anonymous gems. Located on the upper east side, nearly obscured by construction and scaffolding on...

Last Sunday, Ben -- our youngest -- graduated from college. As the weather reporters say, it was unseasonably cold. We sat on folding chairs in the "quadrangle," behind a sea of 583 black mortarboards and black gowns which, I thought, should be cleverly marked with giant red question marks on...

Nearly twenty-eight years ago when I walked down the aisle, bridesmaids in pink and lavender followed me. Except for a college friend, I knew none of them. Two were wives of my husband's friends, one was someone I'd just met, and another was my husband's sister whom...