Almost everything I know about my family and where they came from was told to me by my father. While my mother didn’t talk much about her past, he readily shared his life. Always over a meal; always accompanied by a history lesson. There were stories about his childhood, meeting my mother, losing his eye in a tragic work accident. But the majority of his tales, the ones he told...
My son is fast. He talks a million miles an hour. Moves with bursts of energy. When he’s excited about something, his ideas spill out of him so quickly that I almost have to follow behind with a bucket just to catch a couple. As he’s matured and gotten to know himself better, he’s learned how to corral that energy when needed. At his school orientation the other day, where...
I was working at my computer Tuesday morning when a notification from a friend popped up with the headline that Kate Spade had died. I did a double-take and stopped everything to click on the link she sent. It was 9:41 in Los Angeles, 12:41 in New York. Spade had been found less than three hours prior. Her death an apparent suicide. It seems almost everyone has a Kate Spade...
I fell in love with Wendy Whalen at the end of her 30-year career as a principal dancer at New York City Ballet. Even though I lived in Manhattan while she danced with the company, somehow I never knew of her celebrity. Instead, I discovered her by sheer luck, years and years later, while madly chasing down an orchestral piece by Max Richter called On The Nature of Daylight. If...
I caught myself singing in the shower the other day, which surprised me. Not the singing part (I enjoy ripping a tune), but what it means to sing in the shower. I write in the shower all the time, out loud, running dialogue back-and-forth. But singing, that’s different. I genuinely believe that people who sing in the shower are happy. In fact, when my husband and I hear our kids...
I love me a good odd number. Like 25. So easy to add, and multiply. The typical age by which the brain becomes fully developed. The only good coin. Christmas day. My son’s birthday. And zipadeedoodah, drum roll, please, the midpoint of this midlife writing adventure. Yup, I’m standing at the top of the mountain, looking out at the view, thinking that the climb to the summit wasn’t so bad,...
It’s been a long time since I jumped out of bed at the sound of my alarm and said, “Hello, morning. It’s good to be alive!” Rather than celebrate another glorious day of existence, the best I can do is offer up a string of encouragements, hoping my engine will eventually turn over: You can do it. Just put your feet on the floor. One at a time–ew, watch out...
In the late spring of 1989, on a Friday night at a trendy restaurant in downtown Toronto, I stood up (with several drinks in me) and announced to a gathering of girlfriends that I wanted to become an actor. For context, I was there celebrating my upcoming nuptials, and, no, I’d never recited a line of dialogue or stood on a stage in my life. My admission was spontaneous and...
Another migraine shreds my nervous system. They’ve been showing up more frequently the past couple of years. The assault starts in my shoulder, moves to my neck, then travels to my head where it squats for three days (always three days) before mercifully moving on. My family and close friends who know the pattern roll their eyes and plead, do something, already. I whisper back that I will. And they...
A few months before I moved to Los Angeles I had back surgery. A bulging, cranky disc between my L4/L5 vertebrae suddenly ruptured scattering fibrous shrapnel throughout my spinal canal and leaving me unable to walk. The pain was so intolerable that I pounded scotch just to keep my wits about me for the two weeks it took my doctor to recognize that I hadn’t merely pulled a muscle. An...
There’s so much noise around turning 50. Does one deny being a half-century old? Embrace the achievement? Fight like the devil to turn back the clock? Without question, this age instigates a new chapter with bigger stakes and a growing sense of urgency. Given our youth-obsessed culture and my own compulsion to stay young, I wondered how honestly I could write about this milestone. Fifty on Fifty is my experiment.
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