Settlement in Main Street, USA
We waited in what was once a formal living room located to the right of the entrance hall in an old Victorian house on Main Street. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases with stern-looking volumes now defined the space, the law firm's library. Sitting opposite one another, my...
My First Dog Part 2: Heathcliff
For years, I was a cat lady, but that changed when I married a man with cat allergies and we adopted My First Dog. No fluffy, cat-sized critter for me, I chose the biggest guy at the shelter, a sweet-tempered 8-month old black lab mix, 75 pounds, all tongue and...
First Dogs Part 1: The Death of Beauty
When I was ten, Beauty died. “It’s time,” my parents told us three girls. Mother shuttled my younger sister Leslie and my older sister Jane into the old purple Studebaker and drove off leaving my father and me to take care of Jane's first dog. Looking like a bald...
Cooking Three-Bears Style
Whenever my Mother’s sister walked into the kitchen with cooking on her mind, we headed for the hills: Daddy to work, Mother to the back-bedroom for a long bath, and we girls to the great outdoors but, like curious puppies, staying close enough to listen and sniff....
Staring at Computer Screens
Straight on Main Street, left on Courthouse Square, right into parking lot. Check hair, teeth, lipstick, and gather interview materials. Walk around orange-taped construction barriers and read signs. Which building? I’m not from these parts. The email had...
Chess and a Marriage Thing
Every work day, my husband comes home, changes out of suit into sweats, and either does his weight workout in the basement or dons his reading glasses and sits down to play chess. On the dining room table off to his right, Keith places a tattered book, its cover...