My friend is one of those women who manage to address life directly. Trained as a research scientist, she is clear-headed, quick to analyze a problem, look at data, evaluate options, and carefully track the progress of possible solutions. She has a brilliant mind and a memory that can embarrass the rest of us. She bites into life, eager to experience all it can offer and moves on with grace when loss or pain might make others flinch. In the [...]
Kathy was drowning in pain. Her mother had just died and her husband had been diagnosed with cancer. Her dog of fifteen years was gone. All around her, her world was crumbling as she struggled to let go of one lifelong love and needed to face the challenging road ahead with another. Her husband was in the hospital the weekend that she spotted the ad When she told her girlfriend, Amber, about the puppies, her wise friend insisted that Kathy [...]
My mother died two months before the annual July clearance sales. I found myself walking through Saks Fifth Avenue, and there, on the sale shoe rack and in size 7, were the shoes. Shoes my Mother Would Have Loved Ones I never would have stopped to ogle. Impractical. High heels, for one thing. And spectator style, the white leather inevitably requiring restoration periodically. But they were beautiful. And sexy. And unusual. These were shoes my mother would have [...]
In New York, where the way people protect their boundaries can predict paranoia, I never would have approached the woman in purple. But I was an American in Paris, she was “of a certain age”, I was captivated by her poise and presence, and I wanted her to know she was not invisible. David and I had boarded Bus 80 at Porte de Versailles. Our morning at the Salon du Chocolat had stretched well into the afternoon and left us [...]
David had eye surgery a few weeks ago. For months he had found reading to be challenging and colors distorted. Because of our winter trips to Paris, scheduling the removal of his cataracts, one eye at a time, had required serial delays. Neither of us thought that being across an ocean during his follow-up period was a good idea. Finally, the surgery date had come. The idea of a knife going into his eye, even with the assistance of a [...]
What does it mean, “to love”? Usually we associate the word with living creatures and feelings and the actions that transpire between them. A parent feeding an infant. An old man walking his also aging dog daily. A tribute to a particularly valued teacher. But “love” can describe any fierce attachment that goes beyond words, any passion that is dictated by the heart. I have written on love of one’s work, and will address love of one’s home and love [...]
At Yogaworks, teachers sometimes talk about a “goal pose” for a class. When I was twelve, I first heard Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and fell in love with the music. The piece quickly became my “goal piece” for the piano lessons I had been taking since third grade. By my senior year in high school, I was able to trill the beginning and make my way through a reasonable facsimile of the first movement. The better I could play it, [...]
Alain de Botton wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times “Sunday Review” on May 28, 2016, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. The article sparked a slew of letters in response. Because I am convinced that I married a man who was and is very much the “Right Person”, I want to add my own voice and reflection – along with a song by Linda Worster – that captures my own dissenting opinion. Mr de Botton makes [...]
When David and I began our long-distance romance in March of 1996, neither of imagined that our future would knit us and our lives ever more closely together. Like vines that learn to grow around each other, we have brought each other new people, pleasures, passions, and processes for dealing with conflict, and we have grown closer as the years have passed. Perhaps the most astonishing thing that we have brought to each other, or a gift that has been [...]
The last four years have seen two major breakthroughs from astronomy that will forever alter our world view. In March of 2013 the CERN officially announced the results of two sets of experiments at its Large Hadron Collider that had been unofficially publicized several months earlier (http://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson). A new particle named the Higgs Boson, perhaps occurring in different variations, was identified as responsible for mass and its transformation. The Higgs Field in which it occurred was not an electromagnetic one. [...]