I had a BFF, Phyllis, in my Linden, New Jersey childhood. I grew to 5’ 6” but she leveled off at five feet, if that. We went through elementary, Hebrew School, junior high, and into high school together. I often stayed over at her house, where she shared a bedroom with her younger sister. They had an energetic little brother who we considered a pain,…
My parents went to Havana for their honeymoon in 1943, a popular destination at the time. But there are no photos. That seems odd, because my dad was an accomplished amateur photographer with his own darkroom. They came home early. Something happened. They never talked about it to me or to anyone else. There was vague talk in the family about my mom having some kind…
Dear Readers, I am working on completing my memoir this year. This is a chapter about me at age twenty-two: LIFE STORY DATE I graduated college in 1966 with both a cum laude liberal arts degree and a devastating romantic breakup to my credit. I didn’t want to return home to my parents in Linden, so I stayed in my college town and rented a…
What are you most likely to buy at a sporting goods store? My answer—archery equipment! I never got involved in organized school sports. For girls back in the day, that basically meant cheerleading. I never attended a football game even though our Linden High School team, the Tigers, was wildly popular. Instead, I retired to the town library after school to complete my homework before…
BLOSSOMING In the spring of 1956, when I was eleven years old, my Aunt Jean took me and my younger cousin Donna to Washington, DC. I had been on a big trip before, to a vacation in Florida with my grandparents, but this was on a different level, a mission to see the capitol city of the United States. Dressed in brand new pastel-colored topper jackets,…
🚌 I’m quite independent getting around the city bus system with my pass, similar to my Metrocard in Manhattan. On an excursion to the Shuk (downtown open market), my son Mordechai (f/k/a Max) and I stepped onto a bus with standing room only, the usual combination of many secular but majority religious people on board, including mothers with strollers, Torah scholars, and schoolchildren. I couldn’t make my…
When I closed my law practice at the end of 2016, I became preoccupied with how I would define myself. I willingly shed my professional status, but the word “retirement” didn’t seem to apply to my life. It only made me feel uncomfortable about the upcoming experience. Laurie Geary, a life coach and community educator in Gloucester who succumbed to breast cancer before she herself…
JANUARY 2014: I was a brave girl, walking through the cemetery alone for the first time after the funeral. The area is small by today’s standards but only about one-third occupied, one hundred years old and owned by the synagogue for members and their families. Located in a clearing adjacent to a wooded conservation area, the cemetery distinctly reflects the changing seasons, surrounding the rows of historic…
I imagine the sound of a train in the far distance, blowing its horn as it covers the miles, moving through the plains under the moonlight. If a freight train, it is a hundred cars long with the mountains on the far horizon, hurtling towards the Western states with its industrial cargo. If a passenger train, it moves like a silver streak to stop at destinations…
The kids’ table was a fixture at family gatherings ever since I can remember, so that is at least seventy-two years. With Thanksgiving the week after next and families traveling around the country to spend the holiday together, you may remember your place at the kids’ table too, and not just for Thanksgiving. MY MOM’S PARENTS: For Passover (the Jewish holiday celebrating the Exodus from slavery…
Celebrity Sightings: I’ve never actually met a celebrity one-on-one. But walking around New York City over the years, I’ve seen a few who live there or stay temporarily while on film sets or in Broadway productions. Sightings are fairly common. But residents respect the privacy of their famous neighbors going about their everyday work and personal business. They don’t crowd around them for questions or…
First, it helps to be in Rome, standing at a marble counter with a fresh brewed espresso, a framed black and white of Sophia Loren staring at you to add a voluptuous note. ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ Or maybe Paris in the fall, walking through the Louvre until exhaustion by portrait and landscape confounds you. Then, on to Angeline’s for refreshment, the…
After I graduated Boston College Law School in 1971, I worked in a courthouse in my home state of New Jersey. During that year, I became engaged to Paul and planned to return to Massachusetts to get married the next summer. We didn’t believe in diamond rings or formal weddings and kept our plans low key, unpublicized. Unbeknownst to me, the young, legally blind prosecutor…
Readers, if you have not yet read Part One or Part Two, you will find the story of Anthony and Nadine at these links on my blog: LOVER’S LEAP (Part One of a Short Story) LOVER’S LEAP (Part Two of a Short Story) THERE GOES MY MIRACLE (Bruce Springsteen) When she completed her clerkship at the end of June, Nadine felt oddly adrift in New…
If you have not yet read Part One, you will find it at this link: LOVER’S LEAP (Part One of a Short Story) DREAMS OF LOVE Nadine was due to complete her one year clerkship for Judge Halliday at the end of June. He offered to write her as many letters of recommendation as she needed. She appreciated how easy he made it for her. He…
MEETING ANTHONY Nadine surveyed the grand vista of the courtroom, paneled and wainscoted in carved mahogany, the jury box to the left, prosecution and defense tables in the center. Classic marble columns on the right separated the row of windows reaching to the ceiling. The American flag stood behind her, the seal of the State of New Jersey on another flag within her peripheral vision.…
The summer in Wenham had been uneventful. Hot and humid weather for most of July 2019 slowed down the pace of life. Weeding lagged in the garden. Most summers I have been able to tame the flower beds and spread a handsome layer of dark brown mulch. This year, I couldn’t keep up with the crabgrass and so it spread vigorously after each rain, choking…
HERE, THERE, ANYWHERE I began a somewhat nomadic period in my life when I began college in 1962, living in three different dormitories with three different roommates, an off campus studio apartment, then a gracious Victorian mansion divided into apartments. After my despicable boyfriend cleared out our unit of all significant possessions in a midnight massacre—both his, mine and ours—I traveled to future destinations with nothing…
There is a saying, “If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.” I do not claim such extraordinary powers, literally or even figuratively. But I do know that I can summon memory to shed light, however briefly, on a person who deserves another look.
My college friend Barbara and I took off to Europe two years after college graduation, in early summer 1968. By then I had moved from New Jersey to Boston but we reunited for the trip. This was my last fling before entering Boston College Law School in the fall. We bought one-way tickets to Amsterdam and checked into a youth hostel on the bank of…