Recent Entries

• Vestiges of the past and the treasured keepsakes of others long gone find new homes generations

  May 25, 2023

    The heart hath its own memory 
like the mind, And in it are enshrined The precious keepsakes into which is wrought The giver’s loving thought. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Music touches every key of memory And stirs all the hidden springs of sorrow and of joy; We love it for what it makes us...

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• Looking back on some of the harrowing and uplifting moments in the day-to-day struggle with my mother’s dementia

  May 17, 2023

  Every Mother’s Day is difficult for those who’ve lost a loved one they cherished and who brought them into this world. For me there is special anguish mixed with love and gratitude. I had a mother who dearly loved me and my brother and sister. Her children were the most important thing in the wor...

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• Aging moderately, if not gracefully

  May 13, 2023

  There are scientific studies, performed by real rsearchers in white lab coats, purporting to show that people over 50 do not actually suffer much memory loss, that our ability to store and retrieve information declines just ever so slightly over the years. Bill Geist, The Big Five-Oh! At 40 you k...

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• Clutter is good for you: what we collect, save or give away at some point says a lot about what we value most and wish to recall from the past

  May 6, 2023

  It’s been almost a year since the biggest de-cluttering and emptying experience my life occurred, and only because we sold my mother’s house, where I had also lived for ten years while taking care of her as her dementia got progressively worse. Needless to say there was a huge amount of “stuff,” ...

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• There comes a point where you realize you’re old; best not to deny it but instead embrace both the reality and the opportunities

  April 25, 2023

    Many driven and anxious people with highly ambitious and often unrealistic goals, constantly strive to be better and more successful than others. To me this is a classic sign of dysfunction in one’s personal life. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of competition, tryin...

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• Now’s not the time

  April 15, 2023

  The beach was strange that night. A rather weak cold front was pushing through, but didn’t know when or whether to sweep out to sea. So it was sunny and partly cloudy one minute, and then raining the next. Warm and cooler. Wet and dry. There was a misty shroud over the marsh, but with…

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• The stream: there is something timeless and eternal about the flowing water in a small creek

  April 5, 2023

  I recently read  a beautiful and evocative essay about a walk during which the writer discovered a tiny stream and a house and garden that filled her with delight and awe. Cherry blossoms made it that much more magical. Her description of the stream and garden inspired me to recall a little strea...

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• In Memoriam — Chloe: A beloved cat with a unique personality is gone

  March 29, 2023

  I went out to my brother’s place at the beach for our weekly ritual of Sunday supper together. We all did a good job of not broaching the fact that his cat, Chloe, whom we all loved so much, would likely never return, as she has been missing for a week. Indeed, sadness filled our…

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• Photography lets you explore with your inner eye

  March 25, 2023

    Photography is fascinating to me because it’s both descriptive and symbolic at the same time. Descriptive because it shows you something that looks like the world and symbolic because the best photographs not only show you the world but also seem to reach beyond it, to speak of something m...

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