A Springtime Wave of Nostalgia — It’s been half a year since my husband died. Six intense months during which I was filled with an eerie energy that propelled me into simultaneously grieving the immensity of the loss and throwing myself resolutely into the next chapter of my life. It was also a time during which…

I love turning ordinary activities into magic adventures. Life is too short to waste on tedium. So here are two versions of what happened to me last week. VERSION # 1 — The boring drag it might have been I had to get up while it was still dark and…

A Valentine’s Day Story of Remembrance — Over our 34 years together, we never formally celebrated Valentine’s day. It seemed like a trite and manufactured Hallmark event — with the obligatory sentimental cards, the ingestion of sugary chocolate confections, the crowded lines at restaurants, the little red hearts everywhere. “Every day is Valentine’s Day!” you used to…

Dear Raphael — Today, December 10, 2021, would have been your 83rd birthday. You didn’t make it. Three months ago, after a few days in which the pain, the debility and the morphine threw you into terrifying anguish, you ceased being your normal self, and you fell into a deep…

New Year’s Day 2023. I’m not sharing or asking you to share New Year’s resolutions. We know where those usually end up. Nor am I sharing or asking you to share what the year 2022 was like. Let’s just say the word “challenging” and leave it at that. The question…

Since my husband’s death, I’ve developed a rich new kind of relationship with him — the relationship of love through remembrance. I had no idea this would happen. Who knows ahead of time what it’s like to lose the person most dear to you, and how you will react and…

Something has been happening to the content and repertoire of choral singing in America. And to who is doing the singing. And where. It used to be that choral singing was associated predominantly with the Sunday services of Christian churches, and its content was primarily religious music. …

Sometimes you stumble into learning something new that enriches your sense of the corner of the world in which you live. On a bright California late fall morning after Thanksgiving, I was set to return from a stay in the Santa Rosa-Rohnert Park-Petaluma area of Sonoma County. I decided that…

Ask any American “What’s your favorite holiday?” The answer is almost overwhelmingly going to be “Thanksgiving!” Why? When I was an American kid growing up in a French village, thoroughly embedded in French life and minimally identified with American identity, it was the one day when our family went full-throttle…