Nothing But Net
The ball hit the rim. Stopped. And teetered. A hero would be made — or not — depending on which way it fell. My high school phys ed teacher, Ms.…
Tender Was the Night
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I frequently feel haunted. During our visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Art in fall of 2025, my husband Richard and I were both…
Looking for Gatsby
“You can’t go home again.” The writer Thomas Wolfe believed that if you returned to a place from your past, it wouldn’t be the same. My husband Richard also says…
The All-American
It was a cold, blustery January morning. Icicles draped the parking porte-cochère like holiday lights, frozen mid-melt. A rare recent southern winter storm left lacy ice patches on the dormant…
Crying Time
I wasn’t expecting to learn anything by sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. “It’s such a relief they got all the melanoma,” my friend had said to me after I…
Hometown Hero
Detroit did not come to my mind as a bucket list destination. But it was the perfect starting point for our next trip. My husband Richard was born in the…
Bound to Look Good
My daughter Kristen and I recently went shopping for undergarments. As we walked into Macy’s, I asked the young woman at the perfume counter, “Where do you keep your intimates?”…
Burning Down the House: A Lesson in Generosity and Persistence
In the 1920s, my father’s parents sharecropped land they rented from wealthy landowners in Delaware. My grandmother worked as the cook in the main houses. She was short and strong.…
Finding Christmas
We weren’t prepared for missing Christmas. It was an unseasonably mild December. A wintry mix of sleet and rain started early Christmas Eve morning, turning our yard into ice-crusted soggy…
Waiting for Light
Christmas is coming! On our childhood farm, not unlike hunting season’s opening day, my mother declared the beginning of the Christmas season. It launched with housework. Nestled among over a…
Pretty Girl
I met Ashley after she moved into her new digs in Brooklyn. Our daughter, Claire, lives in the same multi-story building — three floors up a marble and wrought iron…
Palm Reader
“Give me your hand. Let me see what is in your future.” My mother was a devout Catholic. Ironically, she also loved to read palms — mystical future telling carried…
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Looking for Gatsby
“You can’t go home again.” The writer Thomas Wolfe believed that if you returned to a place from your past, it wouldn’t be the same. My husband Richard also says that. And yet he planned a fall trip around the Great Lakes, near where he was born, so that I could discover the area he had called home. It was good to get away. A year of medical issues had disrupted our life and well-made plans. We needed a change of scenery that didn’t involve gray walls and bright ceiling lights. After landing and touring Detroit, we headed north to explore Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior. After ten days, we…
