This weekend will be filled with beautiful tributes to wonderful mothers. You know the ones: the mothers who healed a wound with a kiss, the mothers who baked hundreds of customized goodies for the bake sale; the mothers whose house was a haven for all the neighborhood urchins. If you were one of those mothers, I salute you. Happy Mother’s Day to you. I was not that kind of mother. In fact, looking back, I can recall three distinct events that probably scarred my daughter for life. I know that because, now that she is 32, she tells me frequently that I have scarred her for life. I suppose I sh ..read more

The year was 1988. Betty White, animal advocate, was getting a big award from my employer, The Humane Society of the U.S. I was in charge of public relations, which meant to line up interviews for the great Betty White in our press room at the conference in Crystal City, VA. The problem? Betty White was on the wane. The Mary Tyler Moore show was long over. Golden Girls had been on the air for three years, but hadn’t really been wildly embraced as a cult classic yet. And the dimpled star was years away from being a national treasure. Our so-called local media was the Washington Post, and the on ..read more

I have decided on my phrase for 2022. It is “Carpe Gaudium.” We’ve all heard of “Carpe Diem,” ie seize the day. This is a cousin to that, which I just made up. It’s seize the joy. As we enter the year, I still have yet to celebrate Christmas since my daughter and son-in-law had to quarantine away the holiday because of COVID. Infectious disease experts are saying it’s just a matter of time before we all have some form of COVID, although vaccines may prevent us from actually dying. Of course, we may die because we can’t get a hospital bed for our other diseases thanks to those who are filling b ..read more

Bob Dole died December 5, 2021. Not many people know this, but I worked for Bob Dole for a brief while. I had always leaned Democrat, but nobody told me that once I got a job as a press secretary on the “other side of the aisle” in Congress, there was no crossing back, so I took the first job I could get and I was stuck on the Republican side of the aisle working for a Congressman who was not only the wrong politics, but also a truly terrible person. Still, a job is a job, and I was determined and idealistic enough to want to do my very best for him, rationalizing that everyone deserves to be ..read more

I went to a concert with my daughter a few weeks ago. Her friendship with the lead guitarist snagged us a spot right up front with her other friends and all of us shook and swayed to the very good rhythms. After more than a year inside during the pandemic, it felt good to be out and listening to live music and meeting my daughter’s friends. I had a blast. Later, I was reliving the music in my head when my daughter said, “My friends told me they think you’re really cute.” The music in my head stopped with a scratch. “Cute? They thought I was cute?” I remember back when she was in high school, s ..read more

I firmly believe that my mom puts things right where I will trip over them. I think she does this because she knows that if she places them in the artful cubbyholes of life, I will miss them entirely. After all, I spent my entire childhood yelling, “Mo-o-m, I can’t find it! It’s not here!” only to have her reach around me and pull out the missing object, right in front of my face all along. So, of course, even though she’s been dead for eight years, Mom still knows I don’t do subtle. When my mom died, I knew she loved me – her only child – enough to still watch over me, maybe even to visit dur ..read more

At a friend’s urging, I recently read the book, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Rebecca Traister. It’s about the election Hillary Clinton lost to Barak Obama. But it’s also about the tiny edge that a woman of power has to walk, and it’s about the evolution of feminism. Of course, I remember the election. I remember the contrast between Hillary’s pantsuits and confident stride with Sarah Palin’s soccer mom femininity and cutesy aphorisms. It was ridiculous that a presidential candidate was being compared with a vice presidential candidate, but of course it was also inevitable given that they had their ..read more

You will be told to listen to your gut, to let your body decide when enough is enough, whether it be food or exercise or even ill treatment. They seem to believe that the body is an oracle that will deliver unimpeachable advice, the last word you will need. What you won’t be told is that the body lies. Your body will tell you that the crippling pain is in your lower back when the injury is up in your neck. It’s called referred pain and it will mislead anyone trying to treat  the pain. Your body will tell you that your foot is in excruciating agony when your leg has been amputated at the k ..read more

This is the time of year that many people are dealing with holiday leftovers. Turkey gets made into potpie. Ham sliced into biscuits. Sandwiches, soups, stews and especially hashes, become regular menu items. I’m trying to deal with a different kind of leftover. I like to hug people. Maybe it’s an Italian thing because my mom’s family kisses and hugs the way most Americans shake hands. Or maybe it’s a Southern thing, because “hug my neck” was one of the first things anyone in my dad’s family said to someone they loved and hadn’t seen in a while. And, I like to tell people I love them ever sinc ..read more

Sometimes, love isn’t enough. It breaks my heart to learn this lesson because I want to believe in the magic of love to heal. Especially now, during these turbulent and horrible times, I need the magic of healing love. It is why, when our old girl, Meggie, died at 13.5 years I was on the hunt a few weeks later for a new dog. For our remaining girl, Luna, who was acting understandably depressed, and, yes, for me. Because our house needed joy. For weeks, I applied for different dogs, each with a sad tale. Each time, we were next-in-line as others wanted to fill their empty Covid hours with pups ..read more