A Cat Tale
I was six the first time I hurt something I loved. Growing up on a farm, my sister Valarie and I played with Barbies. But our best friends were chicks…
In A Pickle
The day it happened, palm trees rustled in the breeze, sounding like spring rain. A great blue heron froze, one foot tucked, waiting to spear breakfast with its beak. My…
I Think You Can
I shoved the bike as hard as I could and let go. As a parent, I was never convinced my life lessons landed with my kids. One cool late September…
Nothing But Net
The ball hit the rim. Stopped. And teetered. A hero would be made — or not — depending on which way it fell. My high school phys ed teacher, Ms.…
Tender Was the Night
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I frequently feel haunted. During our visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Art in fall of 2025, my husband Richard and I were both…
Looking for Gatsby
“You can’t go home again.” The writer Thomas Wolfe believed that if you returned to a place from your past, it wouldn’t be the same. My husband Richard also says…
The All-American
It was a cold, blustery January morning. Icicles draped the parking porte-cochère like holiday lights, frozen mid-melt. A rare recent southern winter storm left lacy ice patches on the dormant…
Crying Time
I wasn’t expecting to learn anything by sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. “It’s such a relief they got all the melanoma,” my friend had said to me after I…
Hometown Hero
Detroit did not come to my mind as a bucket list destination. But it was the perfect starting point for our next trip. My husband Richard was born in the…
Bound to Look Good
My daughter Kristen and I recently went shopping for undergarments. As we walked into Macy’s, I asked the young woman at the perfume counter, “Where do you keep your intimates?”…
Burning Down the House
In the 1920s, my father’s parents sharecropped land they rented from wealthy landowners in Delaware. My grandmother worked as the cook in the main houses. She was short and strong.…
Finding Christmas
We weren’t prepared for missing Christmas. It was an unseasonably mild December. A wintry mix of sleet and rain started early Christmas Eve morning, turning our yard into ice-crusted soggy…
Waiting for Light
Christmas is coming! On our childhood farm, not unlike hunting season’s opening day, my mother declared the beginning of the Christmas season. It launched with housework. Nestled among over a…
Pretty Girl
I met Ashley after she moved into her new digs in Brooklyn. Our daughter, Claire, lives in the same multi-story building — three floors up a marble and wrought iron…
Palm Reader
“Give me your hand. Let me see what is in your future.” My mother was a devout Catholic. Ironically, she also loved to read palms — mystical future telling carried…
Dazed and Confused
One of the joys of living at the beach is bearing witness to the permanence of the ocean. Its continual reaching towards the shore. Its mood changes from serene to…
Tears and Tiaras
I didn’t realize that taking my high school guidance counselor’s advice would lead to one of my biggest embarrassments. In the fall of senior year, he suggested I broaden participation…
Courage At 0.5 MPH
I’m a retired physician and empty nester. Basically, a woman with degrees, hot flashes, and a deep commitment to self-deprecation. Wanting to write essays about life’s interruptions, I imagined blogging…
Finders Keepers
My childhood home was a one-story, white-shingled farmhouse nestled in the middle of corn and soybean fields. Typical of homes built in the early 1900s, it was long on charm…
Lemonade and Pearls
One long summer day, a string of fake pearls turned into a lesson on kindness. My dad was a fair, practical man, with a great sense of humor and a…
Good, Better, Perfect
As a life-long perfectionist, anything less than 100 percent never felt good enough. Tutorials on perfection came early in my life. One afternoon when I was in fifth grade, I…
Imposter for the Win
I had never felt like a bigger fake — winning a karate tournament without landing a punch. Three years before, as an on-call physician making hospital calls after midnight, I…
Holding onto Hope
When your sight is in peril and your spirit needs a lifeline, where do you find hope? I entered the exam room for my second cancer surgery. There was concern…
After the Rain
When did I age out of having dreams? I’m not sure the exact time or place, but I know what it looked like. After the melanoma diagnosis, my calendar had…
Pits and Grit
As much as you love your mother — and she loves you — coming together in tight quarters requires patience and understanding. Despite the stress, if you look for it,…
Tangled Up In Blues
Still warm from sleep, I fluffed the pillows and made the bed, reassured by the aroma of fresh, black coffee. My husband and I were leaving for New York where…
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This is Between Business Cards
/I’m navigating life—one foot stuck in the mud, the other trying to pull free. Like you, I’ve held a lot of roles: sibling, employee, spouse, healthy person and one facing illness. Some of those titles even made it onto my business cards. But life has a way of editing our identities—whether we’re ready or not. Over time, my roles changed. I was divorced. My parents passed. I experienced painful estrangements and major illness. And through it all—showing up, struggling, transitioning—I found unexpected lifelines: family, friends, books, projects and small, quiet gestures that kept me afloat. This isn’t a self-help blog. It’s more of a help-yourself-while-I-stumble-through blog. It’s about the collective…
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A Cat Tale
I was six the first time I hurt something I loved. Growing up on a farm, my sister Valarie and I played with Barbies. But our best friends were chicks and calves, puppies and kittens. Each had a name. “Don’t treat the animals like toys,” Mom called to us while hanging wet laundry on a fraying white clothesline. “We won’t, Mommy,” I answered, my arms full of six-week-old kittens. A spring breeze carried the musky scent of cow droppings and freshly mown grass. Dresses, hung by their hems, flapped in the wind as though trying to fly away. Chickens pecked at the ground near my mother, contentedly clucking as they…
