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…
February 5, 2012 – 8:33 pm
We sat around the kitchen table after dinner last night — my son Henry, my husband Steve, and two of our dearest friends in the world, Lisa and Kerby. I met Lisa eighteen years ago, when Henry visited her kindergarten classroom for the first time as a small, shy four-year-old. He already had an IEP from the public school system and a medical file that was two-inches thick. He’d been diagnosed with asthma at three months, sensory integration dysfunction and low muscle tone at two, and various other physical and developmental delays and concerns ever since. He saw an occupational…
September 20, 2011 – 8:58 am
Driving out to Hopkinton in the dark on Sunday morning, it was hard to believe that we could possibly walk all that way back to Boston in one day. Hard to imagine all our fifty-plus-year-old bodies carrying us the distance we’d promised to go. Impossible to know how any of us would feel at the end of 26 miles. But it was easy to remember why were there in the first place, joining the throng of dedicated walkers: because we loved our friend Diane Brewster, and we knew without question that, had her cancer taken a different course, she would…
August 26, 2011 – 11:37 am
All through August I’ve been out the door each day at 6:15, to run two and a half miles to town in time for a 7 a.m. yoga class. It is only for a month, this early class, but I’m hoping that after it ends I’ll continue with my own variation on the new routine. My morning run began as something I was making myself do; with each passing day, though, it’s felt more and more like a privilege, a gift, a blessing. A few days ago Kristen at Motherese wrote about finding flow in her running this summer, and…
I can see it vividly: an August morning, just exactly a year ago. My friend Diane and I were taking a walk, as we had done together countless times over the last eighteen years. As we made our way slowly down the hill near her home, the summer sun warm on our backs, we watched our two elongated shadows, side by side, moving companionably along in front of us. A pair of women walking, a pair of shadows dancing to our rhythm: a small, ordinary moment, but one I will remember always. I knew even then — I think we…
