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I realize I’m a curmudgeonly dinosaur, but I miss late-night church on Christmas Eve. I know, I know, everyone’s exhausted and has obligations the next day, and no one wants to come out at that hour anymore, but I still miss it. I was about seven when my parents decided I was old enough to go to midnight mass with them on Christmas Eve, and I could barely contain my excitement. After the starkness of Advent, I was awestruck walking into the candlelit church, bedecked with gar

This weekend I have been reminded of the beauty and peace to be found in quiet. In dialing back and dialing down from the hype and the shouting and the constant bombardment of, well, almost everything these days. A good friend joined us for a lovely and simple Thanksgiving dinner accompanied by the view of the creek and wildlife outside our Ocean Pines home. We are at the stage in our lives where holidays don’t always involve complicated meals planned and prepped for days for

She sits there in the middle of the kitchen island, resplendent in her trendy stainless-steel garments. She is the Queen, without whom no one is fed, and she expects to be treated with adulation and reverence or else she’ll turn on you at a moment’s notice. Like her mother before her, she is demanding and requires high maintenance at the most inopportune times. “Put in a downdraft oven,” they told us when we built our home in the late 90’s. “Such a clean look with no more ugl

This fall, the Strasburg Railroad’s Facebook page has been filled with pictures of the Norfolk and Western’s locomotive 611. This glorious engine, in service in the 1950’s and the last of its kind, has been in temporary residence at Strasburg for several weeks and has generated much excitement among rail-fans along with some truly spectacular photography. If my Dad were alive, he would have been camped there for the duration. Seeing the almost daily posts brought back fond me

A former teaching colleague posted a picture on Facebook recently that simply took my breath away. I am not reproducing it here, although I did share it on my Facebook page. My friend was chaperoning a group of middle schoolers on a trip to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. One of the students was blind and also had significant hearing impairment. The park ranger lifted the ropes around the Liberty Bell, so the young man could touch it, while he explained its meaning and his

We just returned from a pleasure trip to Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston is a beautiful town filled with stunning architecture, history, and restaurants with some of the best chefs on the East Coast. We enjoyed it all—from our charming hotel in the historic district to the incredible food to walking the sacred grounds of history. Nothing on our screens can ever replace travel and being there in person. We took the first ferry of the day to Fort Sumter so we could see t

That would be my husband and me. We’re in the ocean alongside the kids on boogie boards, the teenagers hot dogging way out in the breakers, and the young parents steering toddlers around  the shallows at the edge of the beach. I still love to get in the ocean. I am cautious, especially with a reconstructed back, and stay close to shore, but I am not too old to enjoy being immersed in the water and feeling the shifting sand under my feet. I like the sticky clean-ness of salt a

You don’t need a calendar to know it’s August, and summer is growing weary. Mornings are often foggy with humidity, and I walk into the gossamer silk of spider webs spun on the porch overnight. The zucchini plants gave up a few weeks ago and although the tomatoes, peppers, and a smattering of green beans are still making a valiant effort, for the most part, garden season is over. The pots of annuals planted with such optimism in May are now filled with leggy petunias. Once-be

Every summer we sing at a retirement facility where a good friend and former organist from our church currently resides. The room where the vespers service is held feels like a conference room in an upscale hotel—tastefully decorated in understated luxury complete with cushioned chairs and hideous carpet. It appeared to be deserted until I glanced up and noticed an elderly gentleman sitting in the back row with his head bowed. He looked rather dejected or perhaps he was just

Fourth of July afternoon brought mid-Atlantic summer weather at its worst—thunderstorms on repeat and in between, steaming, swampy humidity. My first inclination was to curl up with a good book or binge Stranger Things on Netflix. But a year ago, my cousin planned a family reunion at a park in Maryland, a little over an hour’s drive from where we live. My husband and I looked at the rain pelting the windows, and, since the pet-sitter was coming anyway, decided to brave it. We

I remember the old black Underwood typewriter sitting on a rickety metal table in my grandparents’ den. I would roll a piece of paper onto the carriage, poke random keys with their inlaid letters, slam the carriage back at the sound of the bell and play “secretary” until one of the type hammers got stuck. I can still see my grandfather seated at that table, pecking out the occasional letter or medical report. The papers I hold in my hand today were typed on that machine by my

The brass fanfare introduction to Pomp and Circumstance raises the hair on my arms and brings an unexpected tear to my eye, every single time. There’s just something about the anticipation of music that’s so familiar it verges on the trite, yet so evocative that it reaches down and pulls on your heartstrings no matter how many times it’s played. At some point during my teaching career, my colleague and I decided it would be a cool idea to invite the eighth-grade string player

The shops along the boardwalk yawn and stretch, blinking winter-weary eyes at the gradually strengthening sun, raising their metal security doors to welcome another summer onslaught of tourists.  Tables stand ready and waiting at the outdoor cafes with rookie servers anxious for their first customers. Souvenir shops hawk their wares with signs advertising pre-season sales on t-shirts, boogie boards, and caged hermit crabs which will not survive the return trip across the Bay

What I miss: My parents. Newspapers—yes, I get news faster on my phone but there is nothing like the crinkly Sunday-morning-ness of a...

This is the season of beginnings and endings. The season of graduations and retirements, bridal showers and weddings. Nature begins her return to green-ness, tantalizing us with samples of the summer to come. On the first 75-degree day, we resurrect our shorts and flip-flops, poke around in the garden, wake up the lawn mower and hose down the outdoor furniture. We expose our winter-white skin to the warmth of the sun and happily go without socks for the first time in months.

I saw in the paper this morning that the last surviving member of the holy trinity passed away. Granted, an odd statement for the beginning of Holy Week, but in this case I’m referring to three teachers I knew in the beginning of my career who were collectively (and fondly) known as the holy trinity. These ladies taught classroom music and directed elementary choirs in five different buildings and were absolute pillars of the school district. They wore suits, dresses, and he

I turn the top of the concrete birdbath over to face the sky and fill it with a milk jug’s worth of water. Within minutes, a goldfinch arrives along with several of his wren buddies. They perch on the rim, taking furtive sips and cocking their heads at me as if to say, “It’s about time, sister.” I remove the empty suet feeders, greasy with residue from the nut-encrusted fat cakes meant to entice woodpeckers and chickadees. The squirrels will now have to give up their pole-d

If you’re not stirred by the sound of a drum cadence bouncing off city buildings or watching forty horns simultaneously burst into glorious sound, you’re not quite alive. Today I watched the Lancers Drum and Bugle Corps play a concert before the St. Patrick’s Day parade in downtown York. The corps (never call it a band—oops, learned that early on) is stunningly good. They are clean, precise, incredibly musical and smash the stereotype of drum and bugle corps as a bunch of old

My phone has become like an extra appendage, and I don’t go anywhere without it, even around the house. I use it constantly and should probably be in some kind of twelve-step program for addiction to Scrabble and Solitaire. I respond like Pavlov’s dog to notification alerts from the local TV station or my weather apps. If I have to wait somewhere or I’m a passenger in the car, I check email, scroll through Facebook or try to up my Scrabble game. I deposit a check through my b

Right now there are pieces of poster board painted in varying shades of gray lying all over our kitchen. On the floor, against the countertop, beside the cabinets. There are stacks of  tiny paint swatches  everywhere I look. We’ve been to the Sherwin-Williams store more frequently than the grocery store, carrying in our floor sample, a piece of granite and a drawer from the cabinets. This has been going on for close to three weeks, because I can’t decide what color to paint t