We sat on the couch and basked in the late afternoon sun as it poured through the huge west-facing windows of our new home. After 31 years in our Victorian farmhouse with almost two acres of land, my husband and I found ourselves starting over. The process of downsizing was ofttimes grueling, especially the recurrent […]

Thirty-one years ago my husband and I moved to Maine from central New Hampshire, where we lived in a small town in the country outside Concord. We had a large garden, and since I was working as a potter and had my studio at home, I spent a lot of time canning the food from […]

During decades of family holiday gatherings in Maine, my cousins and I heard a number of versions about how our grandmother got here. We have also uncovered photos, letters and public documents that have given us bits and pieces of her story, since she never divulged all the details. In 2012, a small group of […]

I moved to America at the age of 9. Though I hadn’t experienced much in my short years, my native Africa was all I’d known. Though some might say there isn’t much for a 9-year-old to start over from, at the time it felt as though I’d gone from one world to another. I had […]

The wallowing was over. The breakup hadn’t been all that difficult to do once I made the decision and followed through on my plan. The anger had subsided or been pushed away. Friends had kept me distracted. Now, I was ready to move forward. I vaguely remembered who I had been before the enabling and […]

Three months after my wife lost her 39-year-old son to a tragic accident, a family member gave her a special gift – a custom-made chain necklace with a gold star. Embedded in the star was an off-center diamond. John, her son, “was a star,” the family member told her. That was many months ago, and […]

The Camino de Santiago begins at Saint Jean Pied de Port, France, and travels roughly 500 miles through four of Spain’s regions, ending at the Cathedral at Santiago. I saw the Emilio Estevez-Martin Sheen movie “The Way”; read Paulo Coelho’s book “The Pilgrimage” and the German comedian Hape Kerkeling’s “I’m Off Then,” among others; and […]

The 21st century got off to a pretty wretched start for me. After a fourth miscarriage in four years, the end of my marriage and a defeated departure from a teaching job at a rural school where I was workplace-bullied by a few colleagues, I spent the beginning of 2001 working four part-time jobs and […]

Feathers flew over and into the maple tree in the unexpected breeze. Children, whooping and giggling, scurried around trying to capture some before they were gone forever. Mémère, visiting for a month, had been in a “grand ménage” (spring cleaning) frenzy. Every down pillow had been ripped open. The feathers were hand-washed, then laid on […]

The soft knock on my bedroom door came in the late summer of 1968. “Your father is gone,” said my mother from the other side of the door. “Gone where?” “He didn’t say,” she said as she turned and walked away to her car to leave for work. She was a woman not given to […]