Ever since last August, when my son and his wife brought twin daughters into the world, I have wanted to write about them. And I have, in letters, Facebook posts, and in these very pages. Often, though, I hesitate. No one wants to listen day…

I went looking for Mark Anderson the other day. I hadn’t heard from him in years, but wondered about him, off and on, since we graduated from high school together. Our class numbered 698 teenage souls, but my circle of friends was a mere subset.…

Bob and I returned home late, one warm August night. As usual, our cat, Leo, greeted us, flopping down on the living room floor, ready for his nighttime routine. First, get brushed, rolling over on cue. Next, wait for the fistful of treats that come as…

Eden (not her real name, for reasons that will become evident) is one of my oldest friends. After being paired as perfect roommates in college, we remained part of each other’s lives, meeting  up in Colorado, Paris, L.A., and always writing letters. She settled on…

We have survived the move. We put every single thing we owned into boxes, bins, and Hy-Vee bags, and now we live in another place. It’s only two miles from our old house, but I sometimes feel like we went to the moon. The house…

This is a story of three fathers. The first was Harold. He became a father six years after he married my mom, and he became my father eight years later. His children were both girls, which was a shame since he had so much to…

This is the tale of three houses. One I grew up in, one I raised my children in, and one I moved into when my nest emptied and I married for a second time. I will be leaving this last one soon, as we move…

Everybody knows moving is one of the most stressful life events. Only . . . it’s not true. The BBC debunked this stubborn myth two years ago, putting “moving into a new home” way down behind one hundred other stressors. Your response to this news…

Last August, my son and his wife welcomed twin daughters into the world. Bob and I were there, along with the other about-to-be grandparents and a few other lucky family members. Months before, Dan had called with the astonishing news of two babies, where we…

Thanksgiving is over, but I’m still thinking about gratitude. Two things happened, shortly after the holiday, that have me pondering what gratitude is, and how it might sustain us. I am not one for truisms and affirmations. Give me Leonard Cohen’s “There is a crack…

Let me introduce myself. I’m a poet. I love good poetry. (It’s not all good, far from it.) When someone asks me to compose a poem for an occasion, I’m usually up for it, though I won’t write love poems for you to text to…

When we travel, I tend to look up every trivial thing that pops into my head. How old is Ringo Starr? Is Marianne Faithful still alive? Why was the University of Iowa so ticked off at the Stanford marching band? Could I order a tortilla…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and as I review what I wrote in 2015, certain truths leap off the page, some more pleasant than others. Somewhat chronologically, I learned the following, whether I wanted to or not: The…

It happened three weeks before Christmas. My husband and I dashed into Bed, Bath, and Infinity to find a _____ [details deleted to ensure my 30-something daughter is ecstatically surprised by the gift we bought there] and were confronted by one of those pre-holiday displays…

There I was last night, cleaning up, checking the computer, and setting out my breakfast stuff, when it started to dawn on me. Why, I wondered, was I in such a rush to get to bed by my usual time, when I knew I didn’t…

As summer yields fitfully to autumn, my life has taken an eentsy-beentsy turn toward the miserable. Just when I thought it couldn’t get much worse than a chronic daily migraine, I fell on the stairs and cracked two foot bones, one of them known for…

Big bad changes are afoot in my old neighborhood. Dismay has led me to some strange places, including a children’s picture book, a local history text, and a 2009 Pixar movie. The picture book is Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House. Published in 1942, it…

Not long ago, I stumbled onto an insight. It came to me as I descended the stairs at home in the dim early-autumn light. Preoccupied with random thoughts, this question failed to enter my mind: You think your right foot just landed on the last…

I did something the other day I haven’t done in a long, long time. It’s something my parents were aces at, and a lot of my extended family, too. It’s simple, it’s fun, and it supplies a great feeling of accomplishment when you’re done. Why,…

Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954) wrote a terrific poem called “Reading Mother.” It starts off, “I had a mother who read to me Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea. Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth; Blackbirds stowed in the hold beneath.” Many of his references are…