Novelist | Singer
After our rescue with Skip was a no-go, we decided to wait for a while. It felt like a failure, though I knew it wasn’t our fault. I pondered how lucky I had been with my Lila, who was also a rescue; neglected and possibly abused. She loved the family who had purchased her but…
My friends all know about the dog I lost in September 2020. She lives like an angel embedded in my memory, perfectly behaved, most beautiful face, smartest, well trained, understood hundreds of words, Best Dog in the World. To add height to that already noble pedestal, she lived to be 17, spending a couple of…
She is panting for no reason. The day before she seized several times. During one episode, she fell, peed herself and landed on her side at the brink of the open stairs off the deck. I had to catch her to keep her from falling down the flight. Last night she woke me twice and…
We’re all used to COVID by now. I read back through my terrified entries about washing groceries, avoiding any contact with people besides my husband, and fighting my terror of touching anything that doesn’t exist within the walls of my own house. No one has been here, and the house looks like it wouldn’t be…
It never occurred to me that caring for my mother in her last days’ journey with Alzheimer’s would be repeated only several years later. My dear dog and faithful companion Lila has turned the corner into her twilight days. Certainly there are physical similarities; loss of faculties (sight, hearing), loss of mobility and energy, but…
I recently watched a report on the BBC, which is becoming more and more our choice for news, particularly during this COVID pandemic. Every other news station has become, well, something other than news.The report was about mask wearing in Japan. A view of the pedestrians emerging from Shinagawa Station in Tokyo was remarkable. The…
I love the colloquialisms of speech. The color and visual create a mind-freeing image of a person, making audio often much more exciting than seeing a face. I don’t even mind the use of the “aks” instead of ask. It’s not even a mispronunciation anymore. It’s a word learned from the environment of the speaker….
It has been six weeks. I look at this pitiful collection of 7 essays with disgust for lack of output. So, in order not to chastise myself too severely, I have to take stock of what I have done in the past weeks that COVID-fucking-19 has changed our lives. I’m hoping it’s a substantial list,…
As a kid, I continually “rescued” baby birds in the spring, thinking erroneously that they needed me to survive. There were sparrows, robins and even one pigeon that I kept for quite a while. Though I eventually ended this practice (much to my mother’s pleasure), the fascination with birds as pets never left me. So…
The new news is that now we are encouraged to wear masks. Even though Mr. Big in the White House claims he will not. I think Darwin himself would not argue with that decision. Our normally free existence has become a sci-fi movie. I remember just recently (pre-COVID) walking down the street and trying to…