Today we celebrate Father’s Day by connecting with fathers and grandpas in ways that make us feel comforted, secure and with the familiar, like being at home. For me, as a little girl, my desire to seek a connection with my father was as strong as my wish to feel at home with him. Back then, a connection, inherent between [...]
To publish or not to publish, that was the question. I’m into my first week of pub month of my memoir and I’ve been asked if it was my goal to publish. I hesitated in answering because I honestly didn’t know. My intent had always been to just write and working on my manuscript was no exception. At the very [...]
Connection. That word is well-known and well-used thanks to social media. Our electronic conversations never lack the words “get connected” or “connect with me.” The social media applications—Facebook, Instagram and Twitter —are the top contenders that keep us connected with others. Through our connecting posts, we learn of others’ daily lives, who they meet, places they go, even the foods [...]
You will take over 200 million steps in your lifetime. Imagine if your feet could narrate a travelogue, report miles and destinations, when they are at rest, and injuries they may have sustained. What would they say? They dance and run, burrow in sand, hold you in mountain pose. Your feet connect you. Your feet track memories, record the spot [...]
Do you find yourself taking an unexpected pause during your daily travels? For unexplained reasons you stop to consider a feeling or emotion, even a memory that has suddenly hit you? Consider three scenarios. The first, you take a walk, a hike maybe, along a dirt path through a forest preserve where there is an abundance of trees and other [...]
He reminded me of Dennis Rodman, sans tat art, sporting a sparkly studded gray square earring that covered his earlobe. And he worked a toothpick in his mouth like any good gum chewer works his gum. “So, how ya likin’ this weather?” the dark-skinned driver asked me as I took a big step up to slide into the front seat [...]
The asphalt path just north of Oak Street was abuzz with bikers, runners, inline skaters and walkers. Warmth radiated from a sunny sky to cool the early afternoon spring air. I jumped on the path to join the others in a pace too fast for me then but would later be a rhythm I could fold into. Following a pulse [...]
Happiness. We seek it; we covet it. There are endless number of books about it, how to get it, what it means, where to find it. From professors to psychologists, to doctors and yogis and anyone in between, someone has a suggestion about how to find it. Each of us has our own way to secure happiness. Some may read [...]
Memories of growing up in a north suburb of Chicago remain vivid with me today. In my memoir, Under the Birch Tree, due out in June, I recall my little-girl self’s life in my small town of Deerfield, growing up in the neighborhood of Colony Point, and on Carlisle Avenue where my home, a “red brick colonial was the unspoiled [...]
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was yesterday. I fine-tuned an essay I wrote a few years ago and discovered a few reflective thoughts running parallel with my theme in my memoir, Under the Birch Tree. I hope you take a moment to read my personal account of remembrance. Sometimes I see my world as segregated, either black or white. My tidy thinking [...]