They say you should never believe your own press, that you are neither as great nor as awful as any particular source deems you to be. I just had that lesson slap me in the face. Hard. Some of the young women—in their 20s and 30s—from my adult ESL class hung around...
The older I get, the more clearly I see—through my new trifocals—that life really is a give-and-take proposition, often with equally unsatisfactory results. For example, life giveth plantar fasciitis and taketh away fashionable footwear. Conversely, life taketh away...
Both of my parents were first-generation Americans and when I was growing up they often sprinkled their speech with Italian words and expressions that hit the nail on the head for them much better than any English translation could. Their words were like background...
My father, my sister and I enjoyed a close familial relationship, but we also shared a bond that went beyond our bloodline, a commonality we didn’t so much celebrate as endure. We each had an intense dislike of our given names. In a world chock full of Toms, Dicks and...
I’m not what you’d call a nature girl. While I appreciate the beauty of the natural world, I feel no need to camp out in it or get parts of it directly on me. A “back-to-nature” retreat to me means having fresh-cut flowers on the table beside my soaking tub. My older...
My parents were born exactly two years and one week apart. My mom was the older woman, so scandalous! Last Thursday would have been my dad’s 97th birthday and I reprinted some excerpts about him from my book My Pineapples Went to Houston. Today would have been...
I was born to make nice. I know that most women my age were socialized to do the same, but I truly excel in this regard. I hate to brag, but my making nice skills are pretty much Olympic level. If you think Usain Bolt is fast, you have never seen me flee conflict,...
I am not a vengeful person, at least not an overly vengeful one. True, I stifled a snicker when I heard an old flame’s hair was thinning as quickly as his waist was thickening, but it’s not like I had wished that on him. I just took a teensy bit of delight in it. No...
This past June marked ten years of marriage to “the good husband,” as I call him. And, wow, did he ever live up to that title on this anniversary. He completely surprised me with a trip to Europe, including a visit to my relatives in Italy. He planned the...
