• MEMORIES OF MICU

    I recently toured a new state-of the-art medical building. The family/visitor side could have been a luxurious hotel. Original paintings by local artists hung on the walls of lounges with soft sofas and recliners illuminated by diffuse lightening. The operating rooms and intensive care units on the opposite side of the building, out of sight…

  • HELLO BEAUTIFUL

    The guy on the motorcycle looked like Jeff. My heart did a flip. His muscular arms jutting from his T-shirt were tan. Of course not like the arms of the guy I knew as Jeff. His were thin and weak. But I imagined this is what Jeff would have looked like before his accident. I…

  • SWEEPING AWAY THE PAST

     My friend and mentor, Carol Henderson, wrote this for our local newspaper. It is a fitting supplement to my last post: Family Stories. May 14, 2013 One of my cousins recently sent out a letter about our grandparents on my dad’s side, giving us some details from their lives. None of us knew much about…

  • FAMILIES STORIES

    A few years ago, I started to snail-mail a list of questions to my Aunt Anna and she would write down the responses on the pages and mail them back to me. She was my father’s youngest sister and last survivor from a family of ten—five boys and five girls. I entered some of her…

  • WRITER IN RESIDENCE

    I spent part of last week at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines, North Carolina working on my memoir. There was a sign on the door, DO NOT ENTER, WRITER IN RESIDENCE, which led to the hallway where I and another writer had accommodations. My room was the Paul Green room and the second was the Thomas…

  • GET ON WITH LIFE

    Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.  ~C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958 This Tuesday I leave for a four-day stay at a writer’s center not far from my home. As an act of desperation, I will seclude myself with my manuscript and concentrate on incorporating changes that have been percolating in…