Posts

  • 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 Read more

  • 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 Read more

  • 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, Read more

  • 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 Read more

  • 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 Read more

  • WHITE AMARYLLIS

    In my last post I wrote about the trauma surrounding my cancer diagnosis. In spite of mostly negative consequences of living as a “cancer survivor” there were a few positive occurrences. For example, meeting special people I would have never encountered under normal circumstances. A month after my mastectomy I joined a cancer support group Read more