Photo by Jorge Fernandez Salas on Unsplash I’ve attended beautiful funerals in the last month honoring the lives of two special women who were not only good and faithful servants, but moms to everyone who came into their orbit. They were salt of the earth, do-anything-for-you kinds of people. The first was my godmother, the mother of one of my closest childhood friends and a long-time school nurse, and the other, someone I came to know in the last 30 years. In both cases, th

Our neighbors and their families joined us last weekend for an informal, taco night Christmas gathering. I believe a great time was had by all. The kids banged on the piano and one crawled into the dog’s bed to curl up with Stella and there were impromptu trombone duets and noise and board games at the dining room table and conversations about college planning with the high school senior. I suspect the Moms and Dads put the fear of God into the kids about going to the one hou

Columbia High School Class of 1975 This past weekend, I attended my 50 th  high school reunion. Granted, that’s  a somewhat sobering milestone and yet it felt flat-out wonderful to reconnect with old friends. Lots of conversations started with “Do you remember the time we…” or “I’ll never forget when this happened …”  and it felt so damn good to be with the people who knew us at that magical time in our lives when we were  young and idiotic and filled with dreams. Our class g