Writing from the heart: Valentine’s Day
There were 26 kids in my fifth-grade class at Rawson Elementary, and the valentine protocol was that everyone was supposed to get a valentine for everyone else.
That way no one would feel left out....
Writing from the Heart: Good grief
There have been so many deaths on the Island in the past few years. Kids are reeling, adults are weeping, and many of us dread opening the paper knowing there will be another tourist...
Writing from the Heart: Speaking of the heart …
This is a story about how, if you live long enough, some things (like your health) will likely get worse; but if you pay attention, you’ll realize that other things have gotten way better...
Writing from the Heart: No ‘Whadja gets’
This is the first year I am finally not writing about my Christmas envy. That boat sailed. And resailed and docked and crossed every ocean, and on the return trip this passenger continued to...
Writing from the Heart: Higher beings
Sometimes I feel really foolish talking to my cat in that singsongy, “Who’s a good girl?” kind of way. She knows, No. 1, that she’s not a cat. She knows, and I know, that...
Finding Thanksgiving
I met the whole Aronie clan for the very first time on Thanksgiving in 1965. From the stories my boyfriend, Joel, had told me, they sounded very normal, Bostonian proper, formal even. I come...
Writing from the Heart: Rich girl, poor girl
When I was dating my husband, I asked him, “Did you grow up rich or poor?” He was taken aback by the question, but after a beat, he answered. He said, “It depends on...
Writing from the Heart
Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. It’s not as if something happened. It’s just that I don’t have little kids anymore, and I don’t dress up and go to parties anymore. We don’t...
Writing from the Heart: Missed the mark
The headache begins about 11. About the time the caffeine can't believe you didn't have your morning coffee. Caffeine is in shock. “What’s going on?” she asks.
It's Yom Kippur, I answer. The fast began...
Writing from the Heart: Maybe I should get on the waiting list
I visited a friend in one of those super-fancy-schmancy assisted-living places. Her apartment (that’s right, she lives in an apartment) has three rooms, a charming kitchen and, get this, a walk-in closet. She has...
WFTH: Education from the couch
My husband is not a digital native. He resisted the whole internet phenomenon for years. We both did. We judged it. We said it was for kids. We made fun. We said, “Dot-org, dot-schmorg....
Writing from the Heart: ‘Are you allowing it?’
In the late Nineties, I heard about the Abraham teachings, a spiritual entity channeled through a woman named Esther Hicks. The work centered around what she called the law of attraction. She said, The...
Writing From the Heart: Live fast, die young
That’s the cute little quote my son Dan wanted to put under his high school yearbook picture. “No, Dan. Please,” I had said. “Come on. How about Ralph Waldo Emerson or Gandhi or Woody...
Writing From the Heart: The long fight about time
One of the only fights my husband and I have, and I think have put to rest, is about time. He likes to be late. And I like to be early.
So you’d think the...
Writing from the Heart: Marry a mensch
This August my husband and I will celebrate our 59th anniversary. When we are asked what our secret is, my immediate and maybe too glib response is: Marry a mensch.
But if they really want...
Writing from the Heart: ‘An Iliad’
Last week, my husband and I went to a one-man show at Circus Arts at the Grange. These days we have become almost hermit-like, but I received five different emails and texts from people,...
Writing from the Heart: Thank your mentors
The other night, my friend Rick and I were talking about how many teachers had influenced our lives. He had five. I had four. My first great one was my mother. She had learned...
Writing from the Heart: ‘You don’t look Jewish’
“Is it time to leave?” I started asking my husband when the white supremacists in Charlottesville chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” He didn't say “Nance, you’re being paranoid,” but I heard it in...
Writing from the Heart: A new religion based solely on love
One of my closest friends died last Wednesday night, and I hadn’t had any time to process or participate in any ritual to grieve her death. Then I remembered, by coincidence (although I don’t...
Writing from the Heart: A letter to my grandchild
Many, many years ago my sister called me on the phone, animated and breathless. She had signed up for a workshop with an organization called “The Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers.”
She explained that they...