As I made her bed, I felt the lump again. My baby wouldn’t be sleeping under my roof that night. “You’ve already spent so much on my move to school,” my 18-year-old daughter, Julia, said. “You bought my bedding, my…

But every night now, the time arrived to end my day and sit at the dining table, quietly fitting pieces together and talking with my loved ones. I found the jigsaw puzzle about a year into the renovating-and-moving-in process. It…

I can speak French. I can read French. But when it comes to translating a French cartoon or joke, I’m at a loss. I don’t find them funny. “Never cook bacon naked,” my husband announced as he turned over the bacon,…

Now, either no one recognizes me all masked up or nobody cares as they just want to get home in the safety of their own little bubble. So how are you feeling? Are you missing personal contact with your friends…

The day was just beginning, and I already felt defeated. I was overwhelmed as I looked at my To Do List for that day. So many things needed to be done that I knew I’d be up all night to…

I put on my glamorous paper towel gown and climbed on the cot and nervously waited for someone to reassure me that everything was okay. Early in my pregnancy, I felt a stabbing pain on the right side of my…

My husband made it clear early on that he would rather build a bridge to jump off than participate in my quotidian inquisition. My favorite morning ritual is reading the Word of the Day posts on my computer while enjoying…

Knowing all that, for some reason, I’m beginning to have a need to see a game — to experience America’s pastime once more. I was never much of a sportsman. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Being the fastest kid…

Don’t begin your writing career by trying to rival John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath or worse, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Okinawans lead long lives. Here in the USA, we’ve been told that longevity is related to eating healthy, exercising…

Her face contorted with noiseless laughter, so deep I worried a lack of oxygen might damage her brain. The line in the dirt had been drawn. On one side stood my husband, the official of the race, assisted by our…

Then the path turned and led us straight up a hill covered in wildflowers – mountain heather, Indian paintbrush, rosy spirea, yellow broadleaf arnica, bluebells, and more. Sometimes, when a big thing is missing, little things have their chance to…

Heck, I usually see my favorite hairdresser JP every three weeks, so I had no idea how bad the gray actually was. This era of the COVID19 virus has been very frightening but also very humbling – incredibly humbling. It’s…

Running from one department store to another, I tried on dozens of hip outfits, and each one made me feel like I was modeling a Halloween costume. I was talking to my brother on the phone the other day. “How…

I wanted to be able to drive through town, launch my own craft, and dance with the wind once again. I couldn’t dismiss the thought that the little sailboat looked remarkably like a battered mixing bowl. Wide and round-bottomed, it…

That was his mistake because by the end of the day I had caught fourteen bream and two decent sized catfish, and he did not catch anymore. After seven crazy weeks in the house avoiding personal contact with the outside…