JIMMY THE RECYCLER 0:00 / 0:00 Gifts from Dad Jimmy the Recycler My 87-year-old father is a yard sale addict. He drives around collecting stuff, then distributes it to family and friends. And, when my father believes you need something, he never takes “no” for an answer. Occasionally, he’ll discover a treasure, like the gilded […]
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SADDLE UP YOUR PIG Photo Courtesy of Donald Giannatti 0:00 / 0:00 Saddle Up Your Pig What will a mother do for love? To what lengths would she go to make her children happy? My sons expressed one great desire as we planned our summer trip to Montana. They wanted to go horseback riding in
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BENEDETTA’S BREAD Photo Courtesy of Charles Chen 0:00 / 0:00 Benedetta's Bread My grandmother, Benedetta Boccaccio, is about to turn 104 this January. For much of her life, she lived in a Cape Cod on White Street in Hartford, Connecticut. In her 100th year, my grandmother had to leave her little house. She took a
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LAST BOY LEAVING 0:00 / 0:00 Last Boy Leaving I’ve been raising children for twenty-eight years and now my last boy is leaving. He’s going off to college. Every morning, since he was little, he’d walk out to the mailbox by the road and bring in the newspaper. As he’d come back
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O Christmas Tree Photo Courtesy of Morgane Le Breton 0:00 / 0:00 O Christmas Tree Our first Christmas tree was a pine branch stuck into a white plastic milk jug. That fall, we’d been married for only two months when I came down with meningitis. Distracted by my potential imminent demise, my husband Bruce, did
EPIPHANY ON BARRACKS ROAD This is a story about discovering human goodness on a winter day when I felt knee-deep in human crankiness…. “Don’t eat the snow as you wait for the bus!” I shouted early one cold morning, as I pushed two sons out the front door, one to middle and the other to
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THE FOXGANG PUCK INCIDENT Photo Courtesy of Patrick Hendry 0:00 / 0:00 Foxgang Puck One winter evening a couple of years ago, I was arguing on the phone with my oldest son while I was trying to throw together dinner for a small crowd. I don’t remember the subject of the argument, I just remember
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PERFORMANCE ANXIETY The phrase performance anxiety has a special meaning for my husband and me. For us, the term refers to the cold sweat that covers us whenever our middle son takes to the stage or playing field. We don’t worry whether he’ll shine in the spotlight or excel in a game. Rather, we just
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