I had a piece to post for today. But now my dog is dying. I had a whole list of errands, assignments and people to see but it’s all fallen away. As my dog lay dying. I’ve come through that part where she might get better, where I thought I…

There was a distinct scent inside a bowling alley in rough and tumble Brooklyn in the 1970s — metallic and dusty, the indelible whiff of last night’s beer, watery cheese fries, and cigarette smoke on the stale air. …

Wisdom from an old married lady A friend and I sat down to lunch recently. We got to our favorite refrain quickly — rehashing grievances with our respective spouses. Together, we’re clocking nearly 50 years of marriage experience. We talked about the tiny ways they drive us crazy and also…

A mother’s story File Settings Sixteen years or so ago, I found myself in an elementary school cafeteria. Kindergarten orientation, they called it. We’d been preparing for weeks. My son and I traced the route beforehand because he’d already shown his love of maps, and his disdain for surprises. “Turn…

Slaying My Darlings — Let me start this again. If I cut you out of the novel, does it mean you never existed? Well, yeah. Stop complaining. You aren’t real now. There was a time when I needed you, when you were the heart of the book, a way into a big, bold, complicated…

How do you measure success? — I’ve been assessing things backwards these days instead of plunging head first. Slices of my life have gone by in wasted years feeling like a failure, as if something inside me was slightly off what a panel of invisible critics were hoping. …

I’m a lover of new things and a devourer of experience, born with the eye of a writer and a statue-like tolerance for adversity. At least I used to have those things. Well, a version of them. Home, the one I’ve created and earned with family and friends is a…

I’ve embarked on a yoga practice. Nothing serious, just testing how far my aging bones can still stretch. The answer? Not as much as they once could; but not as stiff as they could be. …

(revisited) Passover is performance art of the ancestral kind. A start to finish journey, an Exodus if you will, one everyone is invited to participate in. Even me! My family wasn’t religious, but a sucker for a good story. Year after year, I waited to hear about the Jews epic…