Ten years ago, my birthday. I am visiting a friend in New Hampshire. It is unseasonably cold for early October; already, less than two hours north of our Boston suburb, frost has ravaged gardens, stolen the life out of all the flowers in the big planters downtown. While my friend is at work, I spend the day wandering through her town. Peterborough is just half an hour away from where I grew up, but it feels further, thanks in large part to the mountain in between, the harsher climate over here. When I was a child, we rarely came in…
Remember that poster in your high school guidance counselor’s office? The one with an airbrushed photo of some generic sunrise and a caption that read, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”? At seventeen, I really did not want to hear that. This morning at dawn I stepped outside. The sunrise was spectacular. The first words that popped into my head were, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The birds were singing like crazy. My husband was already down in the field, throwing a tennis ball for Gracie. And my heart…
Her doctor told her she had, at best, two years to live. That was nearly twenty-five years ago, when Kathy Rich learned that after a brief remission, her stage four breast cancer had returned. My friend Jamie Raab knew Kathy and I would hit it off, and she was right. Last summer, when I went to spend a weekend at Jamie’s country house in upstate New York, she arranged for Kathy to come, too. The day we spent together was a scorcher; ninety-eight degrees in the shade. But the heat didn’t stop Kathy from suggesting that we hop in the…
