Get the Party Started!

Posted October 8, 2015

Filed under Life

Tonight I am traveling clear across the U.S. to see my three Cali kiddos. Why? Well besides the why the heck not, it’s time to get the party started! October is my birthday month, and as I intend to keep it as joyous as possible, clearly, being greeted by these smiles is the best way to start. Most of us, myself included, never find it easy to shift decades, to make the leap from one seemingly big number to another even BIGGER one, especially in our youth-celebrated and fearing-the-future culture. But in the spirit of all those fabulously daring women who were still dancing at their 80th, and have forged a colorful path ahead of me, I too plan to make an even bigger splash next year, and the one after that, until, well… I’ll be floating beyond all of this…

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5 Stages of Grief?

Posted October 1, 2015

Filed under Life

Please don’t start this post unless you are willing to finish it. It is a twisting ramble that may seem to be heading straight down into a black darkness; but I promise to get somewhere lighter, together, by the end. So trust, and read on…

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Mother Talks #3

Posted August 20, 2015

Filed under Family

The day after my mother passed I found myself searching for her. Perhaps this is normal. Perhaps even the first stage of grief. All I know is I could not get enough of her. Every dusty photo became a treasure I was seeing for the first time. Even braving the traffic from New Jersey through Manhattan, over the Brooklyn Bridge and past Prospect Park, to stand on these steps, the very ones my mother skipped up and down, the steps her many beaus walked, and finally through this doorway went my father. This home, 1510 on Albemarle Road, that housed my great-grand parents and their ten, then my grandparents and their eight, a house where I brought two of my own for visits. A place to celebrate Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas. Where my grandfather’s casket was brought and the house filled with condolences. The house my grandmother packed up and said goodbye to, and yet I found myself here, sensing the shadow of generations, of a mother who I miss.