Suprise Me

So-so actress; better stage manager. Didn’t have the drive or thick enough skin to go to New York and try for Broadway; married at 21. Took a crummy job doing data entry. Sang while I key-punched. While eavesdropping on the salesman in the office next door I had an epiphany – I could do this! Took… Read More

When I bemoaned some terrible day I had had, she probably did say "there'll be days like this". . . but you'll get through them. Read More

Or maybe that’s part of why I eventually “ghosted” him. I didn’t yet have the maturity, the empathy, the compassion that being involved with someone like him would have required in the long term. Read More

In Canada, new programs were suddenly in place for the unemployed and businesses. Schools closed, gatherings were progressively smaller.  Everything was changed, reminding me that “normal” can dissipate overnight. I harbored a guilty thought—could world-on-pause be something good? Read More

Neither the nondescript stores and the black wilderness of the Meadowlands on one side, nor the dark cemetery dotted with barely visible white tombstones on the other, gave me any assistance. Read More

He traced his commitment to wearing hats to his first jury trial. Read More

Reader Advisory.  Iron Butterfly’s“In-A-Gada-Da-Vida,” and Simon and Garfunkel are referenced in this piece. If an earworm ensues, counteract it by singing “Bingo” (you know, “there was a boy who had a little dog and Bingo was his name-o…”) Snow days During grade school snow days, Chicky Ross, Danny Corsi, Tommy DiPetro and I used to… Read More

Cooking with Gas “Now you’re cooking with gas.”,   my grandmother used to say.  I thought of her after Hurricane Sandy hit New York on October 29, 2012. Although we live uptown,  our proximity to the East River puts our apartment building in the city’s infamous flood zone A.  When Sandy made landfall that day,… Read More

Learning to ride a bike can teach you some key lifelong lessons. That's what my red rocket did. Read More

January 1, 1955. My father is watching the Rose Bowl on television. It’s freezing in Chicago that day, but bright and glorious in Pasadena where Ohio State trounces USC. Everyone looks happy, healthy. “Wouldn’t it be nice to raise these boys in California, where the sun shines all year long?” my dad asks my mother.… Read More