When we died… I met her first in the meditation hall coming at me to greet a new friend, her pale soft hands maybe of 80 years or so. Who are you? I thought, and she asked me the same.…

Deindustrialization brought my hometown, North Adams, Massachusetts, to its knees. Unemployment was 50%. The real estate market evaporated, to the point where those who moved away didn’t bother to try to sell their houses, simply let the city take the…

"And it doesn't seem to hurt all that much", Annie thought, as she struggled to get her aching knees out of her comfortable bed. "Oh, who am I kidding? It hurts like Hell!" " I mean," she went on in…

So, if it is the happy heart that breaks , should we stop reaching for a happy heart? Shall we never buy another puppy because we foresee its ultimate demise? What better example is there than a puppy...Life's lure into…

It's funny (as in infuriating) when people assume I didn't mean the hard truths I laid down, the boundaries I set, the rules of engagement. I don't equivocate. I speak clearly. I stand in my power. Yet some don't trust…

Should I add “er?” I am already old. My friend Pam, with whom I’ve been living, eating, writing with for the past week and a half, just turned my exact age. We have been friends since 10th grade, when we…

Agatha was hungry. Despite her toils all summer in a garden in the back of Frau Bleich’s home, she still did not have enough vegetables to eat. In October 1916, all of Germany was hungry. The British blockage and the…

My husband Kenji and I call them The Hedonists – the lively, partying combo of two families that took me in decades ago, including me in their Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Easter, the launch of the…

That soft smile coming slowly to my lips, practicing the feeling of happiness now, to be ready for the sadness I know to come. One, in spite of the other. Fuck off, be gone. You are so petty and small…

I always wondered how the Holocaust could have happened, how the world let 2.7 million Jews be murdered for cruelty's sake. I imagined it as some kind of equivocation followed by an affirmative decision. "Yes, let's allow this," everyone said…

“It’s the happy heart that breaks, isn’t it?” Delia pushed away her plate where the scone—one I’d just baked and brought over to her—was largely crumbled and largely uneaten. Her discarding of something I’d particularly shopped for – the currents,…

Agatha and Andres fell into a sort of rhythm. Their days were distinctly not intellectual—no books, no museums, no art. Agatha and Andres were grounded in the practical. “What day shall I come to the White House for dinner?” “What…