The other night, I spoke to a group of women in Lexington, Massachusetts. It was rainy and cold, the kind of night when anyone would be excused for staying home, putting the tea kettle on, going to bed early with a book. But the room filled, my nerves quieted, and this group of mothers found plenty to say to one another. As always, the best part of the evening was not the formal “talk” I’d labored over for a week, but the questions that came at the end, the freewheeling conversation between women whose life stories are woven…
I had coffee with an old friend on Saturday, a friend I thought had vanished from my life for good. Nine years ago, Lisa’s son Morgan was murdered while trying to stop a fight near his college campus. He was twenty-one years old, three months shy of graduating with honors, engaged to be married to the girl of his dreams. I first met Lisa when we brought our son Henry to her kindergarten classroom and tentatively showed her a thick file of test results confirming physical and cognitive delays that the doctors said could keep him from succeeding in…
“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” I know from long experience as a mother on the sidelines how easy it is to say those words to our children — and how, although we really, really do mean it, we also (perhaps secretly) really want them to win, too. The truth is, we would prefer them to have it all, the grace under pressure, the good sportsmanship, and the sweetness of a hard-won conquest. He looks so much like his dad, my son Jack. I see it in the way he walks, tilted…
It is still dark, misty-foggy, the velvet sky reminiscent of so many other Florida dawns. Sunrise comes late on the west coast, the day revealing itself slowly. Beyond the wide-open sliding doors: the dull tide of distant traffic, the sibilant chirrups of birds waking. For an hour I’ve been lying in bed, listening to morning sounds, trying to conjure Easter. Hope, faith, peace. Qualities of mind and heart that are all too elusive these days, whether I am scanning the front page of the newspaper or discussing summer jobs with my two sons. My husband, the boys, and I are…
