• WAITING

    August, 2007 I’m anxiously awaiting the results of my daughter’s ultrasound. Last night,she dropped off our two grandsons so she and her husband wouldn’t be late for the early morning test. Rather than call us with the news, she will tie a pink or blue balloon to the mailbox. At seven and four years of…

  • TIMING IN LIFE IS EVERYTHING

    The policewoman at the Motor Vehicle Agency said she would make me look great. She must have read my mind. I was sick of having a drab face looking back at me whenever I took out my North Carolina Drivers License. Earlier that morning I had rummaged through a motley assortment of make-up supplies in…

  • WHAT DOES AGE HAVE TO DO WITH IT?

    I made an ageist comment. It didn’t seem ageist at the time. I was sitting in the second row of a packed room at Flyleaf Bookstore in Chapel Hill as Pat Schneider finished reading from her new book, How The Light Gets In. I came to hear Pat for two reasons. One, I wanted to…

  • WRITING RETREAT

    “Something looks back from the trees,/and knows me for who I am.” — American poet, Jane Hirshfield.  I spent five days at Wildacres in Little Switzerland, North Carolina at a writers’ retreat: The Powerful Narrative lead by Carol and Bill Henderson this past September. My good friend, Lois Roelofs, flew in from Chicago to join me. Without phones,…

  • GETTING ON THE BUS Part 2 of 2

    During the first week, after I wrestled with the monitor to find a comfortable position in bed, I settled into sleep. My heart, booming loudly in my ears, jarred me awake. I pressed the record button and the monitor gave off a high-pitched sound and began taping. As instructed, I lay still. When the whining…

  • GETTING ON THE BUS Part I of 2

    The first night in a hotel room in Estoril, Portugal, my heart, flipping about in my chest, jolted me awake. Thump. Thump. Thump. Silence. Then a rush of horses’ hooves clopped on my ribs. Trying to ignore my heart’s gymnastics, I tried to go back to sleep but the Mariachi band playing under my ribs…