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Listen, here: That much, I can do

The status of grandmother was bestowed on me six years ago last month.  Oddly, it didn’t come with a manual.  Though it is surely one of life's richest blessings, I’m still trying to figure out how to do it. There must be others…

From the Mat to the Mind and Heart

At first there was church, of course, but there had always been church, and probably always will be.  Then there was therapy, some of it encouragingly productive, though one shouldn’t dispense stars for service well rendered on such things,…

Neon, Hot Chicken and “It”: A New Year’s Salute to Nashville

You don’t have to be staring down the neon pantheon of Lower Broadway in Nashville to know one incontrovertible fact.  America’s Music City (as country’s most powerful radio station calls it) is a funky, bizarre place. And whether…
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Southbound Girls and Birthday Reflections

A landmark birthday roared past recently, one of those that bestows a zero digit on your age and thus cannot be ignored.  Even for those of us who aren’t given to ruminating about the terrors of aging, it’s hard not to contemplate the…
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What the Mirror Asked

Like so many Americans, G-ma has been diverted from her usual ruminations on grandchildren and family and turned instead to pondering this historic time in our nation. Anyone with their eyes open in America this week has watched shock…

Four Feet at a Fork in the Road

My daughter stood, firmly planted in her exasperation on the side of the road that bright October day, refusing to move and begging me to listen. “Mom!”  she pleaded, “Come here and just LOOK.  Seriously.  MOM.  Listen to me.” Nononono,…
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On Sibling Bonds, and Remembering Jane

It’s a funny thing about sisters and brothers. You might long for them if you don’t have any.  But if you do, nothing in your life will ever drive you nuts in quite the same fashion.  That is, if you are like most of humanity. Ours…
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The View from the Next Booth

It’s a routine Sunday morning at my favorite neighborhood restaurant, the best place for breakfast in our part of town—that is, it’s best if you prefer to place your order while sitting at a table, to a seasoned grown-up who will bring…
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The Cruel and Beautiful Tricks of Time

I like to think I became a grandparent at a fairly young age (don’t we all?).  Let's don't dwell on whether that is a delusion.  Just believe me when I say that life can sometimes look very similar to the way it rolled before the age…
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Confessions of a Spoiler

It is a truth universally acknowledged (as the immortal Austen might have put it), that giving stuff to kids is fun. They make it so easy for you, the little buggers, when they radiate anticipation, joy, and wonder in such bewitching fashion,…
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There’s No Friend Like an Old Friend

The first time I saw her, she was sitting alone in the bleachers, a row or two above and to the side of my little cluster of friends as we waited for the pep rally to start.  We were freshmen in high school, that tender, socially feverish…
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Spirits in Treasures and Handing Down the Ancestral Seat

A few years back I read a fascinating book about Te Maori, the first U. S. exhibition of ancient art from the native Maori people of New Zealand. The opening of the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York was preceded by elaborate…
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