Do you know any teenage girl who wants to ask her mother for advice? I have known a few, but I was not one of them. I was a private person. It was difficult to open myself up to people my own age. Why would I ask my mother anything about clothes, friendships, boys (you’ve […]

It seemed like a “forever ride” for a boy of 4 or 5 whenever we struck out for Starks. Of course, this was decades prior to the transformation of Harry Brown’s farm into an infamous marijuana party place. Back then it was just another of the landmarks meaning we had almost arrived at Grandpa’s and […]

“Mom, do I have to wear my boots today?” When I used to ask Mom that question 50 years ago, she knew what a big pain it was to put them on. They really were galoshes, and if they were the least bit tight, we had to sit down on the floor and pull them […]

It was January 2000. Sister Deb and I were visiting our parents. The Saturday morning ritual was, butts in the car at 7:30 to go out to breakfast. Lollygaggers were left behind to eat cold cereal. It was our parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Months earlier, we had asked Dad what he thought of a party […]

After my husband, Mike, passed away, simple, everyday occurrences that at one time were easily taken care of caused me to feel insecure, frightened and sad. I sometimes felt a great deal of anger. There were moments when I wanted to go for a walk or a drive, and keep going and never look back. […]

It was the late spring of 1975 and I was 19 years old, wearing pink hot pants and a halter top. I was a member of a USO tour in Southeast Asia. Ten of us from the University of Maine at Farmington were in Korea. Transport between military bases was by helicopter. One day, we […]

I wasn’t even a week into freshman year when I heard the saying “You’ll never know if those are gunshots or fireworks.” Savannah College of Art and Design boasted an extravagant campus in a charming city. Robberies weren’t mentioned in our orientation packet, and neither were the four years of sirens we’d hear on a […]

I am not by nature a risk-taker. In general I prefer to play it safe, at least in real life. But even the most cautious people can have their moments of insanity, especially in their teen years. One summer day I visited Fort Williams with my family. I had spent several of my formative years […]

My husband, Alan, walks through the Maine woods regularly with an ease and confidence I cannot share. He has been wandering through vast woodlands since he was 5, so I was not surprised when he saw the old fire tower off in the distance, researched the trail map and decided to hike to it. We […]

A year out of college, I was finding it impossible to land a job in the journalistic profession for which I’d spent four years preparing. There were two newspapers in Salt Lake City, where I was living at the time, and neither the Tribune nor the Deseret News was interested in my unproven reportorial prowess. […]