Eggs were a serious matter to my grandmother. She had strong opinions about what color the yolks should be, how the whites should perform, and how they should “set up.” She was famous for her angel food cakes, and even had a small side business baking them for others. I was always glad when there […]

We built the house as quickly as we could, because the children we had adopted needed bedrooms and a place to play. The neighborhood was so raw and new that there were no neighbors. But as other houses were added, and other households took roots, we were different. Not the same. Out of place. My […]

My grandmother had a little side business baking angel food cakes. She used to send me to the creamery, which was right up the street and around the corner from her house. I didn’t have to cross a single street, so I could go alone, the coins in my pocket to pay for the eggs […]

When my kids were young, my daughter described her dreams as “night movies.” I liked the term, and tucked it away for future use.
 I usually don’t remember dreams, but I have had a couple that were more revelations than post-pizza epiphanies. Last night’s will remain with me for awhile.
 Somehow, I had ended up somewhere far […]

When I was in junior high, they segregated the boys and the girls for health class. We didn’t particularly care for the arrangement, because half the fun of health class was watching each other make fun of the charts of the human body. However, one morning there seemed to be a particular note of urgency […]

We observed the holiday for two days this year — on Sunday and Monday. Joe was able to get home for the weekend, and we all spent time in the pool and sitting around talking and eating. It was an informal, virtually unplanned, and absolutely organic period of time.
I thought about Memorial Days when my […]

I prefer small cafes and neighborhood diners to ”good” restaurants, and David knows this. So we celebrated Mother’s Day at a local place that is a short drive from where we live. It was a sunny day, and it was heating up fast.
On the bus stop in front of the cafe was an entire family, including […]

When I started college in the 1960s, birth control was not available anywhere from anyone for any reason, unless you were married. Period. The pill had been released to the public, but the public needed to be in conventional unions sanctioned by society in general. And the pharmacist had to agree to fill the prescription, […]

The other day, I stood in a checkout line at a department store with a pair of shoes in my hand. Across from me at the other register, two people waited their turns. One was a young man, muscular and tattooed. The other was a middle-aged woman who had cerebral palsy. She held a bright red shirt on […]

I was there to look for an extra chair to pull up to the dinner table during the holidays. Although I am usually a little annoyed by people who sing mindlessly along with the recorded music playing in a store, I didn’t mind that she was singing along with the Christmas carols. Her voice was […]