Laughing Lady

Living on the water is the height of beauty: from sunsets over a river that ripples with pink and orange while we watch from the deck; to a sky streaking up with color as I lie in bed at five o’clock in the morning and look out the window at the crab boats that putter…

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Lucky Woman

Below me I can hear the noise of the carpenters banging away as they finish sheet-rocking my basement. From my window I can hear birdsong and the river lapping at our shore. At last, we are ensconced in our new house. Moving itself was a nightmare, with an unproductive estate sale, followed by days of…

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Missing the Home We Knew

How often do we return to a place where we once lived, or loved, during a different period in our lives, only to find it changed? Last week, Brad and I went back to San Francisco’s Bay Area, the wealthy suburbs just south of the city. He and I had lived and worked there for…

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Building A Nest In Maryland

For the first time in a long time, children dressed in costumes and shrieking “Trick or Treat” will clamor at the stoop of my house on October 31st. In California, we lived at the end of a long and dark street where no child ever ventured; over the course of the past sixteen years, I…

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Eastward Ho!

Last week, I received many responses to my last newsletter essay, the one about losing the ones we love. Many people agreed that we all need to pay more attention to the way we try and help those we care about as they grieve.  This week, I find myself dealing with a strong sort of…

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