When in the early nineties I lived in Oxford , England, as the new mother of a six-month old, nurses regularly came to our flat for well baby check-ups. All of my medications and doctors’ visits and all those for my child were free for the first year of her life. My prescriptions averaged around ten dollars each, no matter how expensive they were. And I was only a temporary… Read More »What You May Not Know About Health Care
I’m living in an alternate universe. Here I have no water view; it is cold and damp outside and not warm enough inside. There are dogs to be let in and out, dogs that make me wheeze. The cat doesn’t cuddle up to me like mine does. I sit and try to work on a small kitchen table where I can’t spread out my stuff because we will be using… Read More »Surfacing (with a nod to Margaret Atwood)
My 18-year-old daughter who is a freshman in college texted me the other day that she had a date for Saturday night. I texted her back that I thought college kids didn’t date. She replied that yes that was true and she had been complaining about it just the other day, when lo and behold she got an invitation to dinner out with a boy she knows. As far as… Read More »Love’s Labors Lost?
I have been trying to dissect two stories that have come across my desk (or, perhaps I should say my computer) the past couple of days. In one, a youngish blogger is in the middle of a brouhaha that involves a man asking her to his room as they rode an elevator together at four in the morning and includes the comments of, are you ready for this? noted philosopher… Read More »Despicable Behavior: But is it Harassment?
I was into my 30s before I began to tell the truth. I hadn’t exactly been lying in the three previous decades; but what I had been doing was, at best, dissembling, and at worst, well, let’s say I was avoiding the truth. And all the while I had no real idea I was doing it. I come from a family of liars. We didn’t know or tell the truth… Read More »At 50, Finally Telling the Truth
I was into my thirties before I began to tell the truth. I hadn’t exactly been lying in the three previous decades; but what I had been doing was, at best, dissembling, and at worst, well, let’s say I was avoiding the truth. And all the while I had no real idea I was doing it. I come from a family of liars. We didn’t know or tell the truth… Read More »There is Beauty in Truth
When my son was six years old and my daughter six months old my then husband and I moved to Oxford, England for his sabbatical year. I mentioned our trip to an acquaintance who appeared shocked. “I wouldn’t take my six month old to the supermarket, let alone a foreign country.” I had supportive friends and family, yes, but there were more nay-sayers than not. Even as recently as eighteen… Read More »You Might As Well Jump
From my desk, as I sit writing this, I can see the water: the Bull River out beyond a large marsh, the look of which changes depending on the tides. Off to my left is a small marina with a tiny cluster of sailboats and power boats; farther to the left still is the bridge to Tybee Island, the tip of which I can view out beyond the river. The… Read More »Alone, Again. Naturally.
Setting sail: my daughter and I chart new courses.
I wonder: has everyone else following this manufactured crisis about raising the debt ceiling noticed that it’s just a bunch of men playing a high school game of chicken? Each side is racing their car towards the other and hoping the other will turn the wheel away first. I suppose I could make another analogy about, well, you know what, but the truth is that the whole fight among lawmakers… Read More »Boys Being Boys (on this debt ceiling “crisis”)is Very Ugly