This morning (March 23) I awoke to a wisp; it was there, just out beyond my reach, on the outer limits of my brain. I want to write it down before I forget it. Dreams rarely make sense, but they can give some insight into what’s on my mind. In this one, I was going… Read More

Chorus is canceled. Trips to California and Europe, which would include visits with our children – gone. Gym shuttered. Restaurants open for take-out only. “First-world problems”, a friend teases. He is right. We have our health, we have food and plenty of toilet paper (what gives with the run on toilet paper?). I did grocery… Read More

Shakespeare usually has something brilliant to say on a topic like this one: “What’s in a name?/A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Like my cousin Mimi (actually Mary Elizabeth), I was named Elizabeth Ann for our paternal grandmother, who was “Elizabeth Prensky Sarason” (so her headstone says), but I never heard… Read More

By 1972 I was half-way through Brandeis and had not seen my brother in two years. He was studying to become a rabbi at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, but was spending two years in Israel, one as part of the regular curriculum, the second at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, digging more deeply into… Read More

I first wrote this story for the prompt “Finding Your Tribe” on March 14, 2020, just before the start of the pandemic, and added an addendum as Massachusetts shut down the next week, then came back last year. Our conductor, Rick Travers, starts every season (I joined this chorus 20 years ago) by saying the… Read More

After Mother’s sister Ann died in Detroit, it became clear she needed to live close to one of her children. Rick and I each showed her a few continuing care communities close to us (my brother lives in Cincinnati) and she chose to come to the Boston area in 1995 at the age of 82.… Read More

Leap Day is a once-every-four-years astronomical anomaly in the calendar, meant to sweep up the few extra minutes accumulated over the intervening years and set the calendar straight again. It happens to coincide with our presidential election years and I’m sure is a pain for people born on this particular day. When do they celebrate?… Read More

My second grade teacher, Elaine Zeve, first engenderd and fostered my desire to act as she read “Charlotte’s Web” aloud, doing all the voices and soon discovered that I had a flair for imitation and imagination myself. She came to see me in my high school plays and we were in touch until her death,… Read More

Roger and my husband grew up in Newton, MA. They knew each other slightly in high school, playing on opposing local after-school sports teams and through mutual friends, but became very close friends at Brandeis. This is their senior yearbook photo. Dan is on the left, Roger with the mustache in the middle on the… Read More

Moving is a pain. No one enjoys it. That’s one of many reasons I am happy that I’ve been settled in my home for more than 33 years now. Prior to this home however, it seemed we were on the move every year and a half or two years, either to upgrade locations, or for… Read More