Columnists write stories, sometimes their own, sometimes someone else's. A story may inform, persuade or entertain. It's that simple. Columnists have a point of view, which they are obligated to pass on to the reader. Reporters, on the other hand, are obligated to stick to the facts, who, what, where, when, why. News stories are supposed to be unbiased.
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The pretty young woman hobbling out of her apartment, struggling with her crutches and the heavy glass door, put it all in perspective. She was tall, thin and fair with curly brown hair, long legs and her two feet in blue cushioned toeless things that people wear after surgery. She was having a hard time walking, the crutches and the feet things new, the sidewalk slick, the morning cold. I assumed she was a dancer and that tight toe shoes and high-heeled tap shoes were the reason behind whatever had happened to her feet.
Read MoreWhen my son was small and it was winter, we would go for walks in the woods. And he would stretch his legs and take giant steps to walk in my footsteps, the imprint of his boot always swallowed up by mine. It was the same thing with snow angels. I'd make one and he'd make one and there they'd be, side by side. But then he'd…
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They are called "audio systems" now, micro component systems or mini component systems or full-size systems with separate components. Micro is small. Mini is bigger. Full size is the biggest. Boom boxes, portable things that people take to the beach, are neither micro nor mini, (though they're smaller than both) and are sold in a separate department, next to water-resistant sports Walkmen and clock radios. All I wanted was a small stereo for a friend who's in a hospital. Something with an off-on button, a tape deck and a three-disc CD player. Something that a nurse or a nurse's aide wouldn't have to call maintenance to use. On. Off. AM. FM. Simple? Hardly.
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I've been reading Harry Potter slowly, not because it isn't good, but because it is. Because it isn't just one great, compelling, I-can't-put-this-down story, but a series of great stories, each chapter a complete tale. It's nice not to rush through the words. It's fun just to read. Fun? It's a kid's word isn't it? Adults don't have fun. They have weekends off. They take vacations. They go to movies. They walk, run, ski, read biographies. "Was it fun?" That's not what we ask each other. We say, "How was the movie? The snow? The weekend? Did you have a good time?"
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Grief counselors came to Kerri Sullivan's school this week. Nearly a dozen adults, trained to listen, comfort and affirm, appeared at West Bridgewater Middle-Senior High School to help kids just beginning to live their lives deal with the sudden death of one of their own. Kerri, 13, died Monday morning on her way home from basketball practice. She was a passenger in a mini-van driven by her best friend's mother. The van skidded in snow and hit a tree. Kerri, who had unbuckled her seat belt seconds before to let another girl out of the van, was hurled forward and killed. "She had her seat belt on the whole time. When they dropped the girl off, she went to switch seats. It was that split second," her aunt, Shirley Sullivan, said.
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It was dark at 6 o'clock Saturday morning, dark and silent. Everyone was somewhere else - the kids in their own places, my husband on a business trip, even the dog in another room. The labored drone of the furnace was the only sound. I got up ahead of the day, before the sun, the REAL Saturday morning more than an hour away.
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It's a comic's routine, the ultimate "by the way." Insert the stunning headline into the middle of some ordinary news and hope people don't notice. "How was your day, honey?" "Oh fine. I walked the dog. Cleaned the house. Killed your mother. Picked up the laundry."
Read MoreI had no intention of walking her Tuesday. It was cold. It was snowing. And I hadn't walked her for months. My fault for not making time for her. "Not now, Molly. Not now," I said so often that Molly the Lab gave up on me. We walked every day at noon for so many years that I thought we would always walk. The clock in the front hall would chime and Molly would…
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People magazine arrived Monday with a cover over its cover. "Special Offer for People Subscribers," it said. "Life is complicated. Simplify . . . Preview 'Real Simple' Free. The new magazine filled with easy and beautiful ways to balance life, home, body and soul." I will, of course, send away for my preview issue because doing this is real simple. Just pop out the perforated card…
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What's awesome about Florence Kershaw, born 100 years ago yesterday, isn't that she has lived an entire century or that she's in good health or that she has met three presidents or that she golfed right up until she was 92. What's awesome is…
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Diane Moynihan mailed the letter last Thursday. On Friday the phone began to ring. By Saturday people were lined up at her door. The letter wasn't easy to write. "Dear Customers and Friends," Moynihan began. "It has been with true pleasure and pride that my family and I have been able to serve you these last 64 years . . . It is with mixed emotion that we announce the time has come to close the Foxboro Hat Shop." The Foxboro Hat Shop has been a place out of time…
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I wanted it to last a little longer. Not the hoopla that was the holiday but the lazy aftermath - the kids home, the tree still up, all the beds filled, shoes on the floor, coats on the backs of chairs. There was grilled cheese every day, take-out every night, Christmas cookies still in tins, cocoa, fudge, and no thought of a diet. There was also no no timetable, no agenda, no place you HAD to be. We watched movies - "28 Days," "Affliction," "The General's Daughter. We piled on the couch every night at 9 or 10, it didn't matter because there was no need to get up before dawn. We slept in…
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