Cheers for unstoppable Lucy, as she graduates from high school

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Cheers for unstoppable Lucy, as she graduates from high school

The words always come. That’s what I tell myself when I can’t find them. I sit. I think. And I wait. And when the words still won’t come? I ask myself what it is that I am struggling so hard to say?

Maybe this time what I’m struggling to say is simply thank you. Thank you, world. Thank you, Canton High. Thank you, friends and relatives and neighbors and teachers and doctors and dance instructors and used-to-be strangers who have walked this road with us, sometimes many times, leading the way.

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Resilience defines these graduates

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Resilience defines these graduates

My friend Anne says do not compare. I will say that I am sad about something and that I shouldn’t be because what do I have to be sad about? Other people have bigger reasons to feel sad, and really I need to buck up, and count my blessings. Things could be worse.

And she will tell me this: Sad is sad. It is not a contest. Don’t measure it. Just acknowledge it.

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I found joy in the garden, following my mother’s path

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I found joy in the garden, following my mother’s path

It goes back to my mother. Almost everything does. My mother is why I love black-and-white movies and Rosemary Clooney and show tunes and big, gaudy hats, though I look awful in them. Why I make Irish bread with caraway seeds. Why I thought, and think still, that no one will ever take the place of Johnny Carson. Why I don’t put new shoes on a table. Why, to this day, I wish upon the first star.

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How a not-so-perfect cooking pan became a lesson in our lives

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How a not-so-perfect cooking pan became a lesson in our lives

The pan was not exactly a thing of beauty even when it was new, but it was comely, emerging from its box exactly as described: “perfectly balanced … premium materials … beautifully designed.”

My husband held it with both hands as if it were a chalice, then raised it over his head to admire it from all angles. It was a consecration. Only the bells were missing.

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Christmas in April, and the timing was perfect

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Christmas in April, and the timing was perfect

I can see the Christmas tree from where I sit. It’s in the front hall, and because my office looks out on the hall the tree has been my companion since early December.

It’s artificial, of course.

Right now it is decorated for Easter, festooned with Peeps and chocolate eggs and small, fuzzy bunnies and forsythia plucked from a neighbor’s yard.

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Manners cost nothing, so why are people stingy with respect?

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Manners cost nothing, so why are people stingy with respect?

My glasses were dirty, they’re always dirty, and I was in a parking lot rummaging around in my ridiculously giant pocketbook for the little blue microfiber cloth, which should be where it belongs in the zipper part of my bag, but never is. That’s when my uncle, whom I went to visit last week in Florida and whose car I was driving, handed me a handkerchief.

He pulled it out of his pants’ pocket and smiled.

“You have a handkerchief?” I asked, as surprised as if he had pulled a coin out of his ear.

“I always carry a handkerchief,” he said. “I put a fresh one in my pocket every day.”

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An ordinary, pleasant day is the most precious kind of all

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An ordinary, pleasant day is the most precious kind of all

I have been away, but there is no away from this. The war I watch on TV is real, as real as the ocean in front of me.

I walk the beach. I am on vacation in North Carolina so it’s not warm. Not like Florida. But the air is soft and there is no breeze and though the day is overcast, the beach is long and wide and the waves are rhythmic and gentle.

But for the war, this would be a moment in paradise. It’s tranquil and remote, off the beaten path. You can walk for miles and hear only birds and the lapping of waves.

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Before COVID, there was a freedom that is no more

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Before COVID, there was a freedom that is no more

Nearly two years. That’s how long it’s been since the big bad wolf came huffing and puffing, causing us to batten down our hatches, forcing us to stay inside. Nearly two years ago life as we knew it suddenly stopped. Before was a different world. There were smiles you could see. Handshakes between strangers. Kisses among friends. Galas. Parties. Celebrations. Crowds without end.

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Finding my sunshine on a gray winter’s day

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Finding my sunshine on a gray winter’s day

It’s just weather, people say. What’s a little rain? What’s a little snow? You shouldn’t let it affect your mood.

But it does. It’s hard to be cheery on a gray winter’s day.

Think of it as silver, my granddaughter, Amy, says. Amy doesn’t need the sun to be happy. She is the sun. She’s away at college now, she left in September, but she continues to message uplifting sayings often written by anonymous someones to feed the world’s weary souls.

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Wouldn’t it be nice? Fifty-four years after we married, it still is.

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Wouldn’t it be nice? Fifty-four years after we married, it still is.

Everything has changed since that day. The house in which I grew up. The neighborhood. People I knew. The music we listened to. The way we listened. TV. Movies. Manners. The way we communicate.

I picture the day. It lives in my mind. January 20, 1968, a Saturday. The wedding was at 3. My mother wore a long, teal green dress with three-quarter-length sleeves. My father wore a black tuxedo with a gray vest. There were six bridesmaids and six groomsmen. Do people say bridesmaids and groomsmen, now? The words feel antiquated, stale on the tongue. The bridesmaids wore red velvet gowns, fur hats, and fur muffs. It was very Doctor Zhivago, which was a style at the time.

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At times like this, a cheerful daughter is the best medicine

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At times like this, a cheerful daughter is the best medicine

When my daughter Julie was 5, I caught a flu, took to my bed, closed the bedroom door, and told everyone to leave me alone.

Her older brother and sister, as well as her dad, were fine with this, but Julie kept slipping me notes: “I hope you feel bedder.” “Want me to make you a baloney sandwich?” “How about if I read you a story?” Each note was accompanied by a drawing of me looking sick and her looking sad.

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She dances for the two of them, with grace and love

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She dances for the two of them, with grace and love

It makes me happy to think about them, two people I don’t know, a man and a woman with whom I shared a waiting room for a little over an hour a few weeks ago.

There were six of us in the room, five waiting for the same doctor who’s been known to run a little behind, not because he’s on a break somewhere, reading a John Grisham novel, but because he spends extra time with people who need extra time. And don’t we all need extra time these days?

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Cherishing porcelain angels, and the real ones in our lives

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Cherishing porcelain angels, and the real ones in our lives

I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. I came to Florida to rescue him. That was the first time. It was March and his wife had just died. And there were COVID-19 restrictions: No wake. No funeral Mass. No funeral. No friends stopping by.

Leroy, my uncle, was alone in a home he had always shared. And then his knee gave out and he fell. An ambulance raced him to a hospital. After a few days, he was given a cortisone shot. After a few more days, he was transferred to a facility for rehabilitation.

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A season of reunions, each full of tears, relief, and joy

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A season of reunions, each full of tears, relief, and joy

It had been 311 days since I’d seen my youngest grandchildren. We’d said goodbye the Monday before last Christmas in a parking lot in Connecticut. My son had rented a car for the occasion, and driven from Manhattan. His wife was back at their apartment packing. Two weeks later, they, their three children and Daisy, their dog, moved to Scotland.

That day in the parking lot of a strip mall, we spied a small restaurant, which was still serving food outside. It was a mild day for winter, but still chilly. We sat at separate, metal tables, with our jackets zipped and scarves around our necks. The kids ordered hot chocolate and chicken fingers. The adults drank coffee. All of us chatted about Christmas and the new year and what it would bring.

And we pretended to be happy.

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Welcome aboard the flight, but check these boxes first

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Welcome aboard the flight, but check these boxes first

Next time, I will tell you what it was like getting to be with my grandchildren after not seeing them for a year. Next time, I will tell you about Euan, the 8-year-old, and how big he’s grown, how he is devouring Harry Potter books, having seen all the movies and how, as we were out walking one day he paused in midsentence to point out a single, pink rose. “Isn’t it beautiful, Mimi?” he said. Next time I will tell you, too, about the 12-year-old and the 14-year-old.

For now though, COVID-19 continues to steal the show.

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How is it we have fallen to this level of disrespect?

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How is it we have fallen to this level of disrespect?

Before I was an adult, I never heard my father swear. Not even damn or hell.

I’m sure he knew his share of curse words but he didn’t use profanity around me. Nobody I knew did except for my friend’s mother who said things like, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, give me patience,” and “Sweet God in Heaven, don’t make me have to come upstairs and get you,” which she claimed were prayers of intercession, not curse words. And my Uncle Frank, whom my aunt started to date when I was around 8, and whose language was salty because, my father explained, “Frank is in the Coast Guard,” leaving me to believe that the sea, which to me was Nantasket Beach, was as full of colorful words swimming about as it was of fish.

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A daily phone call, and the love that endures

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A daily phone call, and the love that endures

He never complains. I call him between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. every night and he is always upbeat.

“Hi Beverly,” he says and I hear a smile in his voice.

“Hi LeRoy,” I answer, and because he’s smiling, I smile, too.

LeRoy is my father’s youngest brother, the last of the Curtin clan, my grandmother’s baby, my only living uncle. He was born 94 years ago this Sunday, on Oct. 17, in Cambridge when Cambridge had more factories than universities.

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Finding common ground by looking up at the sky

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Finding common ground by looking up at the sky

It’s a week old, ancient history in today’s fast-paced, frantically frenetic world. And it’s superfluous, too. What’s a rainbow anyway but the sun’s rays distilled into colorful arcs? Nothing magical or newsworthy about this. It’s science. It happens. And yet, Saturday’s rainbow must have worked some magic because it cast a spell. “Go outside and look up at the sky,” my daughter texted. “There’s the most beautiful rainbow.”

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I’ve watched him grow up, but it caught me by surprise

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I’ve watched him grow up, but it caught me by surprise

My daughter Julie has an app on her phone that makes it simple to create a digital collage. So I am used to getting photos from her, which juxtapose images of last summer with images of this summer or that show her children at multiple ages on multiple first days of school. She recreates poses, too, driving to a spot where a picture was shot and taking a photo of the same people in the same pose, from the same angle a year or two later.

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