Suprise Me

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

Cantor Gladys Gladys and I both lived uptown,   she on Manhattan’s westside and I on the east.   Yet we first met not in the city,   but in Lakeridge,  the Connecticut community where we both spent country weekends.   And once we discovered we both loved Scrabble,  we’d play together as often as we… Read More

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If you are someone who disliked gym, join me on a little fantasy trip. You arrive at high school for the first day of your junior year. Looking across the street from the school entrance toward the gym building, you see … a pile of rubble! The gym building stands no more. Is this just… Read More

When I started thinking about this prompt, I started a list of all the reasons I had to be grateful, and soon found there was a true embarrassment of riches.  When stacked up next to myriad reasons to be dismayed, angry, and depressed, an old saying came to mind: “I guess a man (sic) is… Read More

I believe they loved each other, but that's never enough. Not for an entire life together. Read More

This is my first story prompted by Betsy Sarason’s memories of Interlochen (National Music Camp). My parents made me go there even though I liked my old camp, I loved it and they used to remind me “Aren’t you glad we made you go”. Of course my brother Johnny, a talented pianist, had gone there.… Read More

What’s Your Story? Knowing I write,  my friend Betsy invited me to join Retrospect.   I was already blogging,  but writing to weekly prompts sounded intriguing. Yet little did I know how special Retro would become for me and writing would be only one part of the experience;  reading stories by fellow writers another;  and building friendships across… Read More

Little songs would run on endless loops as I concentrated. It was a sort of fuzzy daydream state, where only vague thoughts of work or the future hovered at the periphery, kept at bay by my mantra of the day.  “Doing the garden, pulling the weeks, who could ask for more?” Read More

The first poem I remember from my childhood is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. I memorized it when I was young to impress my father, who was a huge history buff. Not a great poem, but I still remember some of it: Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the… Read More