The story goes that when my father’s parents divorced when he was eight, the reason given was not infidelity, moral lassitude, or drunkenness, but messiness. Theirs was an example of the inability of two people to share a life when one was messy and one was neat. There are many apocryphal stories in my family and this may be one of them, but I suspect...
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Every summer I make a pilgrimage to New England where I did some of my growing up. In a rented car I drive the familiar roads of Massachusetts and Maine, reacquainting myself with humidity and the color green. The farther north I go the fewer people there are, and along the coast the air cools and becomes salty. I don’t pull off the highway to find a bowl...
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When I was a chubby five-year-old in puffed sleeves and shiny red shoes, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had one answer: I want to be famous. I had learned not to say I wanted to be a fireman. Everyone laughed at that. But I couldn’t say what people expected, a teacher or a nurse. I didn’t want to be a teacher or a nurse. My first...
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Here, two big winter storms brought a few trees down. The grass is lush and the ferns my mother planted have grown in and spread along the new drainage ditch. The place looks cared for, as my parents used to care for it. The driveway has a fresh load of gravel and the house a new coat of paint. I got here last night and even in the dark I could sense the...
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If you’ve never listened to the Hot Country Knights singing “Pick Her Up,” you may not be interested in reading any further because this Letter From Home is basically a paean to pickup trucks, including the lyrics they inspire. An example of this brilliance is: “If you wanna do right on a Saturday night/This is all you’ve gotta do/…Pick her up in a pickup...
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