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I grew up in a family of backyard bird-watchers. My grandfather hung feeders on poles high off the ground that aligned with the windows of what he called his den—the room with the old-fashioned typewriter and a worn green leather recliner smelling faintly of Old Spice after-shave. He’d crank the casement windows open, and I would help him fill different kinds of seed feeders and dab peanut butter into logs with holes drilled into them. He taught me to identify chickadees and

The man was there again today. He comes in the mid-morning when the gym and the pool are quiet. He’s gaunt, balding, and confined to a wheelchair. He may be my age or a few years older--it’s hard to tell. I’ve never heard him speak. He arrives with a young male caregiver who knows exactly what to do without any prompting from his client. The man wears a vest that hugs his upper body, and the caregiver assists him with pulling protective sleeves onto his forearms and working

I sit here at my desk half expecting Baxter to pad over and nudge for food. Or leap up onto the back of my chair and purr. It is too quiet—no scratching sounds in the litter box or on his digging board, no whining for us to move the baby gate so he can come downstairs. God, this one hurts. I’ve spent too many sessions in the comfort room at the vet’s in recent years. We lost our rescue Westie, Vinnie, in June 2020 after a five-year battle with chronic liver disease. Shortly

An almost unseemly green against the otherwise desiccated garden, the peppers peek out from under a lush growth of tousled leaves. Along with a few earnest green beans, the peppers are all that remain of summer's bounty, thriving among shriveled tomatoes and bolted lettuce. These late summer days when the hot afternoon sun fades too quickly into the cool of evening always remind me of the last weeks of my father's life. That fall I took a leave of absence from my teaching jo

I saw you. You didn’t think I did because I was busy putting grocery bags in my cart and talking with the young man at the register. I saw you glance down at the sign taped at the end of the conveyor belt that said “trainee.” I saw you turn away even though the belt was empty, and I was nearly finished. I suspect  you turned away because when you heard the cashier speaking, you thought it best not to choose this lane, even if it meant waiting longer somewhere else. Honestly,

Just came back from a trip to one of our local grocery stores and wanted to share a few tips about using the self-check-out lanes. I’m not talking about the ones for when you just have a gallon of milk and a bag of dog food. They’re convenient, and I’ve seldom had a problem with them. But, my friends, beware of the I’m-now-a-store-employee ones with the moving belts and the multiple bagging stations. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. First of all, I totally understand that

We’re in the midst of puppy camp right now with Sophie, the Westie puppy who joined us in January. We spend an hour a week learning the basics of civilized behavior—sit, stay, down, and how to control yourself when approached by another creature. The class consists of fifteen dogs of various breeds and sizes, and the head instructor has the demeanor of a high school coach working with a team of new recruits. She keeps both the over-stimulated puppies and anxious owners well i

I bury my nose in the top of the cat’s head and smell a faint odor of the peanut butter I’ve been using to try to get pills into him. He’s thinner and his coat is losing its luster. He’s spent the last few days snuggled in the back of my closet, hiding. Not a good sign in a senior cat. We know it’s probably time to make that call to the vet, but I keep putting it off, hoping for a miracle. The puppy yelps as she and the older dog slam into each other in one of their freque

My cat has a cardiologist. Neither of us does, at least not yet, but our twelve-year-old SPCA cat is officially under the care of a veterinary cardiologist and will begin taking Plavix this week. Seriously. Baxter has always been the low-maintenance creature in our household. We have had a progression of beloved but high-maintenance pets over the years. The most recent, Vinnie, a rescue Westie who crossed the Rainbow Bridge in June, suffered from chronic liver disease whic

I wrote about what I learned from quarantine way back in the spring and thought I’d revisit, now that we’re closing the books on 2020. I am incredibly grateful for my health. I never dreamed the new reading chair I bought in fall of 2019 would get so much use. Our twenty-three-year-old, no-repairs-ever-and-still-going-strong dishwasher should be in the appliance hall of fame. I don’t know if it’s a result of the pandemic or my age or having endured a year of the gha

I always put up two creches at Christmas. The one in our family room came from a 1960's Woolworth’s, where it was displayed in the same aisle as the plastic window candles and aluminum trees. Some of the figures still have price tags on the bottom that say twenty-nine cents. A few of the lambs are amputees and the original cardboard stable has long since disintegrated, but this is the creche I grew up with, and I still cherish its delightful tackiness. My other creche is a w