Greg’s hallucination of the one hundred Matta relatives was like one of those ghostly premonitions in a Shakespeare play.  Here they all were at the hospice center. And no one was disappearing into the ether. My first reaction was, “How am I going to deal with all these people? How can I be social and chatty when my husband is dying?

I had been musing about wanting life to be easy, or easier. Life can’t be easy, I realized, but it could be lived with greater ease.

There’s an energy on the beach – joy, optimism, playfulness, thankfulness, and wonder.

This is why beaches are pleasure magnets.  How often have you seen angry, anxious, and sad people at a beach?  Rarely in my many years of beachgoing.  The attraction of the beach isn’t…

There’s a deep well of love, joy, and hope that lives in our subconsciousness. When we stop thinking and start dancing, we open a direct source to that love and joy. So what stopped me, and what freed me?

My problem, and the reason I will not say yes to everything like Shondra Rhimes, is that I get in trouble when I say yes. In fact, my default is to say yes to everything impulsively.  Like when…

I sit on an Adirondack chair on my back porch and wait for what starts every Saturday afternoon during the summer. Every Saturday is different. Sometimes muted, oftentimes loud, always hopeful.

Have you ever quickly fallen in love, jumped into living together, and soon realized that your new love had some issues? 

You begin to notice neediness, unpredictable behavior, and red flags like …

I got up at sunrise to clean up the mess before the kids came to the lake to play hockey…

When my body was fixed and I was “even,” how would I chose to walk? A story on kissing the ground.

My family had different ideas of fun when we went to our rustic, no-running water, no-WiFi, no-heat cabin on a little lake in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

The Amazon algorithm says my new book is number one today in Biographies and Memoirs about Women and number two in Death and Dying. This makes me uneasy.

Oh, Honey. I didn’t think you’d choose me. I’m faded and yellow, and the insects have poked holes in my once-waxy beauty. Usually, you go for the striking reds, burnt oranges, or the still-vibrant greens...

Dear Rawson Pond,

Thank you for grounding me in the New England seasons. You taught me to appreciate the spring peepers, the territorial arrogance of the mating swans, the 28 species of ducks who would stop by as they migrated in the fall, and the hard-working river otters...

Dear God or Divine Guidance or Jesus, Mary, or Joseph:

Please help me stay optimistic.

Please don’t let me become bitter and brittle.

I struggle every week to be caring, patient, kind, compassionate, and a good listener...

The judges ask the finalists, “Why do you think you deserve to be Miss Fairchild?”

I don’t remember what the two contestants before me said. I am panicky. Skinny me with the coke-bottle glasses and homemade clothes. My heart is racing, racing, racing. They are waiting for me to say something. Anything.

“You can do it,” a cute guy shouts, which intimidates me more.

When forms ask for my religion, I write “creative expression and kindness.” Which always makes harried receptionists smile. Kindness is obvious. Creative expression is a different kind of holy. It’s about caring for our own spirit.

Dear Book Club Friends: Thank you for you. Thank you for us. Books, movies, TV series, politics, setbacks, struggles and joys. Marriages, illnesses, children, miscarriages, divorce, death, work, school, bad bosses, good jobs, no jobs…

What surprises me most about my life right now is how lazy I want to be. I have always been busy, living by lists.

A caregiver’s fashion coping strategy, dressing for neurology, cardiology, radiology, and all the other bland and boring medical waiting rooms.