I think that every generation of children has a touchstone television show whose ingrained theme song immediately brings back their youth. For me, it was Leave it to Beaver, and then later with my younger brothers, most definitely The Dick Van Dyke Show. Every night at 6:30 we would watch the opening credits and try…
Read MoreThe basic plot lines of forbidden love, the overwhelming desire for what you can’t have, undiluted jealousy have been the fodder for umpteen movies, cheap paperbacks, great works of fact and fiction, and certainly scads of episodes of Law and Order. But you add in the detail that the basic tawdry love triangle included three…
Read MoreThis summer marked out debut performance as gardeners. Our new house came with a dedicated, fenced in garden and underground automatic watering system which would have been handy if we could ever figure out how to use it. We had a very casual and expedient approach; we got some seeds and simply threw them into…
Read MoreThe quick trip to the grocery store was pathetically mundane. I was simply there to pick up the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies, but at the egg case I found myself caught in a morass of conflicting humane, ethical, economic and nutritional decisions. I normally reach for the standard Grade A large eggs, but…
Read MoreI would not consider myself a good conversationalist, and you can’t convince me otherwise, because every time I take one of those personality tests, I end up with all the other socially awkward people. But I have developed a few work-arounds over the years, and the one that I have field tested the most extensively…
Read MoreI recently heard a friend describe her declining atheletic prowess as like “a horse who should be sent to the glue factory,” which set me to pondering about the fate of loyal farm animals when they make the inevitable transition from livestock to deadstock. And I had always wondered whether glue of my childhood, good…
Read MoreMy meeting downtown finished early, and so I arrived at O’Hare hours ahead of time for my evening flight to Atlanta. I settled in to read, and then deep into my novel, I became irritated at the flashing lights above me. As I got up to move my seat, I realized that I had been…
Read MoreFor two crystal clear days in June I was sequestered in a conference room in a swanky Chicago hotel listening to presentations on mouth sores – an exquisitely painful side effect of cancer therapy. The room darkened and the group was treated to lurid slide after slide of glistening red and oozing mouth sores. Oblivious…
Read MoreI was over 30 years old by the time I finished my college, medical school and residency training. One of the most joyful aspects of this feat of endurance was the realization that I would no longer be subjected to standardized tests. The guiding philosophy of the medical school I attended was not to train…
Read MoreI greeted my first assignment as snack mom with undiluted pleasure. Like many of my contemporaries, I had delayed childbearing into the thirties, and had only two children. Now was the time for commitment to participate intimately in the life of my children and to bear witness to every school pageant, field trip and sports…
Read More