Calling Home

When I look back to when I first became a mother, I see myself enmeshed in a tangle of emotions. Wonder. Fear. A love so intense it left me feeling…

“Kenna hora,” my mother used to say, a Yiddish phrase that, to the best of my understanding, asks the evil eye to look away. She’d attach it to any mention…

Ethan is in college two hundred miles away. We speak on the phone an average of twice a week. In the absence of my one child from my day-to-day life,…

As my boy grew into adolescence, I felt my old longing for a fuller table, this time on his behalf. I wanted Ethan to be at the hub of good…

Ten years ago, when I was still working as a librarian, I had a memorable lunch with a colleague. She was older than I, close to retirement age, and her…

“You know people plan these things a full year in advance,” a good friend of mine pointed out. Her calendar was filling up with work and family commitments. She found…

Home. That small, one-syllable word carries a huge amount of weight. How much of what we call home has to do with location, and how much is about the people…