It’s a special event when one person gives a gift to another, for any reason. Gift cards or registries are now the most popular choice of gifting for birthdays, graduations, weddings, holidays, housewarming, etc. In some ways it’s impersonal, but in other ways it’s better. We’ve all given or received gifts for which we or the recipient have no use or liking whatsoever. 🎈 …
When I was born, my grandmother tied a strawberry pink ribbon around a curl on top of my head, my first hairstyle. In elementary school, I wore my stick-straight brown hair in a pony tail, with bangs across my forehead. Closer to my teens, my hair took on a darkly burnished auburn sheen, not quite the brighter red of my mom’s hair. She braided my hair each…
I’m just now recovering from my shock that cursive script is no longer taught in most elementary schools. And, I have learned that those who do not learn to write script cannot read it either, as if it were a foreign language. I own a family treasure, my parents’ fervent courtship letters exchanged in 1943. My dad wrote in a deliberate, ornate, vertical hand. He…
I took off to New York City last month to visit my daughter and her family. Each morning, after I leave my two-year old grandson at daycare — where his lifelong buddies Calvin and Aakash greet him with unrestrained glee — I head to the neighborhood patisserie for my coffee, brioche, and digital New York Times. On Tuesday of my Upper West Side week, I…
My dad spent a portion of his weekly paycheck on books for me and my little brother Stuart. If household funds were tight, my mom implored him to go to the library instead, but my dad had no will power when it came to buying books. He followed the publishing news to find out which new titles won the Caldecott or Newbery Medals, that brushed gold circle on the cover with embossed impressions for young fingers to touch…
When we moved here in 2003, I wasn’t quite ready for Wenham. My husband Paul and I downsized to our ranch house on Essex Street from our family homestead in Essex. On the same day that we passed papers, he turned on the ignition of his Kubota farm tractor and began to reshape the landscape, clear overgrown brush, take down trees to make room for…
In Part One, I related my experience of my son’s religious community with its own customs, dress, beliefs, and values — one of many ways of life that are different from what we know. I deeply believe that one-on-one relationships between individuals, families and groups from diverse societies and cultures is the way to increase understanding and — eventually — supersede the lack of acceptance…
I visited Israel for the first time in the year 2000 when my son Max (now Rabbi Mordechai Levine) was in his third year of religious studies at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem. He rented a studio apartment in the Old City for me and my traveling companion, my mom Rose, hired an anthropologist to take us on tours, and introduced us to his new friends,…
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take…” Joseph Campbell. Two years ago, I almost moved to New York City. I came to Boston from New Jersey in 1967 and never looked back — that is, until December 2015. The closing of 2017 brings…
UNE FEMME TRES CHIC Is this Paris? No, it’s New York City on a September afternoon. Walking at my leisure, free to take in the street life, the buildings, the signs, the storefronts, the ornate facades and wrought iron grill work, I see Frenchness everywhere. WEST 73RD BETWEEN COLUMBUS AND AMSTERDAM I’ve collected several books of photography over the years that for me embody the signature sensibility…
My husband Paul loved the Costco Wholesale Warehouse with a passion. He discovered it when it first opened on Route One in Danvers in 1990. Eventually, we went there together, pushing our basket up and down every aisle and taking in the fascinating new seasonal items (lawn chairs, umbrella tables, plants, pergolas, backyard storage sheds) or household and food products in super-sizes and quantities. The huge Cheerios boxes…
My dad, Julius Weiner, left a significant artistic legacy, a collection of sepia photographs he took in the 1940s and painstakingly developed in his darkroom. I plan to compile a book of selected photos and write an imaginative essay or poem to accompany each one. I’ve organized them into categories: parades, musicians, landscapes, buildings and industrial sites, 1939 World’s Fair, and scenes from his favorite venue, a…
I picture my Aunt Jean in her iconic pose, elbow on the kitchen table with Winston cigarette in hand, sipping from a mug of strong black coffee, then listening to talk shows on her bedside clock radio far into the night. I sometimes joke with her daughter, my cousin Donna, that her mother never ate or slept, she only worked, smoked, and caffeinated. When she hosted bridge games for her friends, she offered Danish pastries to accompany the main dish, the percolating pot of Maxwell House.
My birthday week in New York City began today, a Sunday morning on the Upper West Side. In years gone by, the highlight of the weekend was the Sunday Times delivered at dawn, or picked up at the news stand before breakfast. Now it’s digital, absent the weekend ritual of sharing the coveted sections between family members, waiting turns but enjoying fresh coffee and bagels with cream cheese in the interim.
If we reconstruct the run-up to a meaningful encounter or life-changing event, and follow the trail of random decisions that preceded it, it would be a miracle that it happened at all. In my case, my very own existence depended on the direction of a weather pattern and a decision made as a result by my mom Rose while on her summer vacation in August of ’42.
It’s the beginning of August, giving me time to prepare for the birthday that will close the month for me, then open my new year. This turns my thoughts to origins, the origin of my name in particular. In the PBS series “Rumpole of the Bailey,” the main character, a crusty British barrister, refers to his wife in the third person as “She Who Must Be…
Fall is the beginning of time for me. I was born on August 30th, and each new year of my life coincided with the opening of school. The night before the first day of school, I set out my clothing after looking through my drawers and closet a thousand times. One year, I had enough inventory to wear a different outfit each day for two…
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you will look back and realize they were the big things” (Robert Brault). I look back with love and longing over the thousands of pages in my book of married life – days, years, decades of treasure. Yet, the days upon days of routine become indistinguishable one from the other, punctuated from time to time by…