My husband, Marc, shares enthusiastically that he is meeting with a composer his local orchestra has solicited for a piece of music. As he tells me about her and how they will explore his percussion instruments, he drops the bomb. “She’ll be here at 2 p.m. tomorrow,” he smiles, as he walks into another room to pull out and display his instruments for her...
Read More
I do what I always do when I haven’t heard from Hank – whose name has been changed for the sake of privacy – for over six months: I scan the obituaries. He’s still alive, as far as I can tell, which means something else. It means his emails must be in my spam folder. Alas, there’s no proof of life there, either. Which means only one other thing is...
Read More
My first memory of sending Christmas cards was helping my grandmother at her kitchen table. Everything she needed was staged on a white plastic tablecloth covered with poinsettia designs. She had a damp sponge sitting in a saucer on the table for my job: to seal the envelopes and affix the stamps. It seemed that she wrote a letter in each card, but I don’t...
Read More
My husband sent me a link to a book review this week by an author whose work is in my wheelhouse. The author’s new book extolls the mental and physical health benefits of walking in his neighborhood the past several years. Of small observations and large realizations. I think of my almost-finished manuscript of walking my own neighborhood. A world-weary...
Read More
The river shush-shushes through Jane’s backyard as I catch the last of the afternoon breezes under the shade of several trees. It’s tempting to close my eyes, to call this a meditation, but another thought has taken over as I listen to birds calling to one another from the trees on the bank of the river—do birds have accents like humans? Is that why I...
Read More