Nostalgia

I just finished the book Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid for my book club. Although it is fiction, I found it insightful in many ways. What struck home for me was the “burden” the women astronauts felt in being the first women in the space program. Not only were they expected to be exceptional in their respective field of expertise…

Evites, Facebook birthday wishes, thank you texts, catch up emails… many of our generation lament the loss of paper invitations, formal thank you notes, birthday cards and an occasional newsy letter. I have boxes of thin, blue, “by air only” letters that my Belgian parents sent each other in the 1950s and those my mother, after moving to the US, exchanged with her parents…

When the summer of 1969 rolled around, I had just turned 15. I vividly remember the day my mother came into my room and handed me a round ticket to Lausanne, Switzerland, to spend a summer at their International Teen Camp.

“There will be teens from all over the world,” she told me, “It will be good for you to get out of the city.”

For most of my life, I looked at family photos as most others did – they were little snippets of time. I would pick up a few envelopes of prints and flip through the 20 or 36 photos inside, still safely ensconced in their designated sleeve right next to their…

My mother, Estelle, was born Esther Lanch in 1911 and raised in a Jewish household in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. From Odesa, where her mother was raised, to London and the Jewish communities of Montreal, New York, and San Francisco, the family encountered anti-Semitism in mid-Twentieth-Century America…

There is a particular kind of grief that doesn’t have a funeral. No one sends flowers when your favorite restaurant closes after 50 years. There is no ceremony when the beach bar where you spent a hundred perfect afternoons nails a sign on the door and goes quiet forever. My wife and I created so many memories…

The other morning, I found myself listening to a song I hadn’t heard in quite a while. It was “Monsters” by James Blunt. The first time I heard that song years ago, it hit me like a freight train. Something about the sadness in the lyrics, the emotion in his voice…

As a certified mindfulness meditation teacher, I have taught these practices in different spaces, and one of my favorites was teaching in my community’s park and recreation programs. Interestingly over the years the classes I offered expanded from teaching mindfulness/meditation to facilitating workshops on transitioning to retirement…

My granddaughter is drawn to anything sparkly. If it’s pink or purple – or both – all the better. One afternoon, I set my jewelry box in the middle of the bed. She climbed up next to me, legs tucked under, already reaching. We went through…

Outside the generous window of this restored 1800s barn apartment, twilight had settled over the Trinity Mountains. A single soulangeana tree glowed pink against the fading sunset, while the white dogwood buds waited to open in the shadows of the tall pines…