April 30, 1993

Letters and unending guilt

April 30, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

Some are piled in a box on a table. Some sit in a black plastic tray on my desk.

I divided them when they arrived. The to-be-answered-immediately, I placed in the tray. The to-be-answered-later, I stacked in the box.

I shouldn't have put them in either place. I should have stopped what I was doing and written back right then, but I didn't for a million reasons. I was in the middle of something. I was walking out the door. I wanted to think about what to say. I wanted to write more than a quick note. Something or someone else needed my attention.

April 27, 1993

`Family values' vs. Blue Laws

April 27, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

So, how long have we been listening to our politicians pontificate about "family values?"

The phrase has been on everyone's lips for the past year, but the concept has existed forever. The family - it's sacrosanct. It's the bedrock of the nation. If we could get the family back together, make it strong, then the country would follow.

April 25, 1993

Support your local library, the jewel in every community crown

April 25, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

The stamp is what did it: "Duxbury Free Library" in bold print on the first page of a book I picked up in Canton.

You can do that now. Go to one library, request a book, and have it sent to another.

The word free startled me. I hadn't seen it on a book since I was a kid borrowing from the Turner Free Library in Randolph .

April 23, 1993

A woman's words, another's voice light the darkness

April 23, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

She was drawn into it. She was the moth, and it was the flame. It warmed and burned and consumed and ignited her.

It became her passion and her cross.

Another woman's words. Another woman's life. Lived 50 years ago, half a world away. A stranger, yet kin.

As we all are.

April 20, 1993

Fear of failing haunts us all

April 20, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

A friend, a newspaper reporter who'd retired to write books, set up the interview. It was a long time ago and a long drive away. I hadn't thought about that interview for years. I’d buried it in the place where hurts and humiliations get locked up.

I don't even remember the interviewer's name. But his words live in granite.

April 18, 1993

Reminder: Your milk or your Mastercard's about to expire

April 18, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

The world is too much with me. Or too little.

It's out of control. Or I'm out of control. I can't figure which.

It's the small things that are getting to me. Like the sticker on the license plate of my car.

"Do you realize your car isn't registered?" a friend asked the other day. It's registered, I assured him. I mailed the check months ago.

April 14, 1993

Time to see what's before us

April 14, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

The tree man said he'll come and fertilize the dogwood, which has been a pink umbrella in my backyard every spring for the past 20 years. Last May the tree bloomed in sparse, uneven patches. I knew it was sick. A smaller dogwood had withered and died a few years before. When we cut it down, it was as dry and splintered as driftwood.

I didn't want to believe that this other tree, one I have watched grow tall and thick, a tree that shades the patio where I sit and turns the world surrounding it into a pink haze for a few weeks each year, could suffer the same fate.

April 13, 1993

And crime no longer shocks

April 13, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

And on it goes. The news in brief. Three stories, six short paragraphs on page 18 last Friday, tell more about life in America today than all the front page headlines combined.

A 19-year-old Roxbury man was hospitalized in serious condition after an unknown gunman fired at least 11 shots at him, striking his chest, stomach, buttocks and both legs. The victim was taken to Boston City Hospital. The gunman fled in a black Camaro.

April 11, 1993

Right and wrong no longer shocks

April 11, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

"Before and After." It's a book I haven't been able to get out of my head.

Before and after. It's how we mark our lives. The befores and afters are turning points. Before we got married. After we got married. Before someone got sick. After she got sick. Before he died. After he died.

Something comes from without, something good or bad, and permanently changes the structure within. And forever after there is a division between then and now.

April 11, 1993

It takes a daffodil to prove that spring will come again

April 11, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

One December day, when I was about 6, my mother announced, "Christmas is right around the corner."

I took her at her word, grabbed my coat, raced out the door and ran all the way to the end of our street. I expected to see a parade - Santa and his reindeer, a walking Christmas tree, and a bunch of elves marching toward me.

April 09, 1993

In America, the bad guys are winning

April 09, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

It's a wonder the news didn't break on the business pages: "Violence Has Miami Tourists Wary. Florida's Top Industry Fears a Deadly Image."

A mark, a yen, a buck, a pound - it's these that make the world go 'round.

April 06, 1993

A season of forgiveness...

April 06, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

Love thy neighbor. This is what we're called to do. Every day of our lives. But most especially this week, Holy Week.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. This is what we pray. But how do you forgive? How do you let go of hurt and anger and hate?

Petty things cause such wide rifts. A neighbor invites a dozen kids to a birthday party, but excludes your son. How could she be so insensitive?

"Why doesn't anybody like me, Mommy?" the child asks. And anger hardens and becomes cement around the heart.

April 04, 1993

Demise of local TV shows will give us more news, less empathy

April 04, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

Maybe it's just nostalgia. Age kicking in. A longing for something I never knew I wanted in the first place.

So what if "People Are Talking" is going off the air in June. What impact will this have on my life? None. I hardly ever watch the show. I hardly watch any TV. What do I care what airs and what doesn't.

I don't.

April 02, 1993

True first loves never really leave

April 02, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

He was my first real love, a flesh-and-blood boy, not a creation, not someone Rosemary and I invented on a Saturday afternoon as we walked downtown, or on a Saturday night as we babysat.

Those heartthrobs - Val Poche and Jimmy Weber - were actual people, but people we didn't know. They were older boys Rosemary saw at church or at school, around whom we invented a life.

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