Authoring Myself Late in Life
I was not young when I lost my mother in the mall; I was probably in my mid 30s. We had walked into the huge department store together, side by side. Once inside, I somehow ended up a few feet behind her, looking at her back as she walked along the front of the store, past the wide-open area between the cashiers and the end of the aisles, and disappeared before my eyes. [Click on title to read]
I sobbed unrelentingly for three hours the night before friends came to help me move the last items out of our house on the Farm River.
I post today not a post of my own, but a poem and comments that were sent to me by my cousin, Cate Hart Hyatt. Thank you Cate, thank you Maya Angelou, thank you Nina Totenberg, thank you RBG When Great Trees Fallby Maya AngelouWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall... Continue Reading →
The pandemic may have lessened the enjoyment of delegates, reporters, and participants of the Democratic Convention, but for home viewers like me, it created a much more pleasurable, albeit more curated, event.
Have Mask, Will Travel...The store was huge and there were scarcely any cars in the parking lot. It was 7:00 on a Saturday evening and it was the Fourth of July. People in upstate New York had better places to be than Hannaford’s Supermarket, but I wanted coffee when I woke up in the morning.
The long green stems of the chives on our balcony swayed in the breeze and we went out to sit in the waning light of the day. Rosemary had noticed the chives; she is often the one who creates little spaces in our day, openings for us to attend to and appreciate the world.
I had barely taken a breath of appreciation for the declining virus numbers, when the news ramped up about the Second Wave. I looked out my bedroom window, beyond the Bossert Hotel, past Brooklyn Bridge One, to the mingled arms of red and blue cranes at the Red Hook Terminal, which docked the Queen Mary 2 in healthier days.
“What are you doing here?” my rheumatologist stopped short as she came out into the hallway and spotted me. It was early March and I was there for my regular check up. “My patients with RA have all cancelled and you not only have RA, you have this lung disease as well. This virus will not be kind to you. You should not be out.” [Click on title to read the whole post]
After the doctor phoned and told Rosemary that she wouldn't be getting the magical new drug that we had spent the last six weeks hoping for, I kept waiting for the mistake to be discovered and corrected. [Click on title to read the whole post.]
Becoming Brynna 