I took the coaster home and stuck it in my journal, but I didn't tape it in. I like holding it. I like looking at it.

The image on the coaster could be my father. It's circa 1950, a sepia sketch of a police officer, standing alone, straight, serious, hard-brimmed hat, young face, clean shaven, long wool coat, badge over the heart, polished leather shoes…

I've always had trouble with endings. My friend, Anne, gave me a card full of them one Christmas years ago, which she'd cut from newspapers and magazine articles.

“I need an ending,'' I'd said to her at least a hundred times. And so she sent me some: ``And that, folks, is not funny.'' ``Oh, yes, and have a nice day.'' ``Yup. Just like your…

I never would have described Rona Jaffe's 1958 best seller  “The Best of Everything, ''which I read in 1958, as “vintage heavy breathing.''

I don't remember heavy breathing at all or “sweaty, illicit and brain-fogging sex; furtive hotel room trysts; tussles in boardrooms and darkened apartments; and searing emotions…

He loved them instantly, more than all the other wind-up things in the room. He looked at them in wonder, the way his mother did when she was his age. It was the first time I saw the baby she used to be in him…

The pool was full of people when Loretta went under - her mother, her sisters, my husband, our friends. She slipped into the deep end from the shallow end, the drop abrupt. Only my husband saw.

He fished her out and she came up sputtering. She was 9 or 10 at the time. She hadn't screamed or thrashed. If he hadn't been watching…

We never take our eyes off them. Well, sometimes. When we blink. When we sleep.

But all the other times we're watching.

We watched them when they were infants, first in their bassinets, then in their cribs. We watched them in their swings, opening their eyes, looking around…

They are kids. Take away the wheelchairs and ventilators, the crutches, the aides, the letter boards, the speech machines, all the adaptive equipment and what you have is a group of kids hanging out on a spring day waiting for the speeches to end and the fun to begin…