All Purls. No Swine.
Every year, for almost more years than I can count whether we're together or apart, my family has raised a glass each Christmas season to those we love but won’t see again in this world, and to those we love who are still with us, but who are not able to share our celebration, because… Continue reading …To Absent Friends and Loved Ones, 2022…
Cross-posted from Ricochet: Oh, “dear, dear, dear.” I tried out that phrase, beloved of my father when dealing with a screaming infant, on my 18-month-old niece a few days ago. She immediately picked it up and responded, “deoo, deoo, deoo,” thus instituting the first two-way conversation we’ve ever had, even if only over the phone. I’m… Continue reading Music Hall Memories
My head kept telling me she wouldn’t live forever, but my heart simply would not believe it: Patricia Helen Mead Muffett, July 13, 1923–December 10, 2022, Rest in Peace. It’s the first time for a little more than one-hundred fifteen years, that neither my Dad, nor at least one of his siblings, has walked the… Continue reading Ave Atque Vale: Goodbye, Miss Chips
She is, unequivocally, the most charming puppy it’s ever been my privilege to know. (For those interested or even just wondering–or perhaps choking a bit over the unfamiliar word–it’s pronounced SHOO-sha, being a Basque girl’s name, native to the Pyrenees.) “She has such a feminine head,” said my veterinarian, when I texted her a photo. And… Continue reading Xuxa!
Those words were spoken by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, to the family members of those who perished on September 11, 2001. And I’ve often thought she must have been channeling C.S. Lewis at the time: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.… Continue reading “Grief is the price we pay for love”–September 11, 2022
To be perfectly clear from the outset, I've been living in a construction zone since 1986, the year the late Mr. Right and I moved out to the country and started on our house. Large swaths of the drywall were never painted. Much finishing was left undone. Doors have been missing. Floors were, in some… Continue reading Feeling Grateful, Blessed, and Very–Very–Clean
A few months ago, I was invited, by someone I've known slightly online for a number of years, to join a book club. Rather trepidatiously, I agreed, with the stipulation that I couldn't be much involved for several weeks due to some personal commitments around the same time as their weekly online meetings, commitments which… Continue reading Blessings from the Great Beyond: The Machine That Thinks Like a Man
Today is the second anniversary of my husband's death. I mark it by including the tribute I wrote for him at the time, and with the concluding quatrain from Tennyson's magnificent In Memoriam A.H.H: I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; Tis better to have loved and lost Than… Continue reading Frank Zbozny: In Memoriam
Please forgive me. This is, largely, a re-post from many years ago, in the Ricochet group writing category “heroes.” I’ve changed it a bit. But the sentiment’s the same. I offer it today on what would have been my mother's 94th birthday: A few weeks ago, when I signed up for this post, I’d never… Continue reading Mother’s Day Hero: My Mum
She is, indeed, my Warrior Princess. Eleven years old today. And a survivor. She was born on June 17, 2011, and–as a Great Pyrenees puppy–somehow ended up living in an apartment in center-city Philadelphia PA. God knows why. Or how. GPs are not–as a rule–high-energy dogs, and they can do quite well without an extensive… Continue reading Happy Birthday, Xena!