My grandparents would stare at me from dusty, chipped frames occupying the top of the heirloom mahogany furniture piece strategically placed in the entrance hallway of my childhood house in Venezuela.  Grandma Agnes, my mother’s mother, drew me the most with her mysterious smile and bright blue eyes that bore through the aged photograph creating a luminous space around her. She sat on a bench on a porch somewhere during summertime when it was lush and sunny, Vermont, perhaps?  Or maybe her native Philadelphia?  I’ve no clue.  In the photograph she is close to the age she died, her early 70’s, and I suspect this was one of the few times my family shared with her, assuming I was there.  I would have been a toddler wreaking havoc on the other side of that porch.

Truth be told, the only memory …Read on

My mother’s terrycloth robe appears in my thoughts every morning.  If my eyes were to see such a thing today, draped on a dummy, let’s say, I’d believe it to be horrendous:  a putrid mocha-colored sea of fuzziness, with a plain beige belt strap and a black trim.  I can’t think of any skin tone that would benefit from it, and most certainly not my mother’s with her pale skin and salt and pepper hair.  So not her color.

This was a sophisticated and fine lady we’re talking about.  Marilyn Dorothy Graham Flynn was grand.  A graduate from Vassar, she was super smart and had the quality of a Hollywood star with sparkly eyes, a killer smile and the most graceful poise around.    Black and white pictures of my father and her dating emanate her strength and beauty next to a …Read on

If you are like me you try to do things right.  Have the best intentions, and all that jazz.  Of course, there’s always a bit of the struggle.  Especially when you are a bread lover/aficionado/obsessive-compulsive eater and you are a Jew during Passover.

This presents a challenge.

A tough challenge.

I overcompensate my anxiety over not being able to eat bread during Passover by hyperpurchasing.  Hyperpurchasing means, instead of five boxes of matzo (the unleavened cracker one should replace bread for during the week of Passover) I buy twelve.  Because I figure, if my counter (already cluttered with Lulu (my fabulous, hot red mixer) toaster oven, Magic Bullet, and blender (still waiting on the Vitamix gift, folks!) is crammed with an excessive amount of matzo boxes, then this will, in turn, convince me to make the bread-to-matzo leap for the seven allotted days …Read on

I want to tell you that I cooked something divine last night.  That it was rich and velvety and luscious.  That my palate celebrated each morsel and was awoken by the many layers of memorable flavor that left me yearning for more.

But I didn’t.

What I did was not nearly as glamorous.  Or romantic.  Or exotic.

What I did was merely try to breath.  All day I focused on this task, in fact, attacking the mission full force with an arsenal filled with tissues, medications, homeopathic remedies and in the end, defeat.  This head cold I’ve been sporting for the last three days outwitted all my attempts.

So savoring food was quite out of the question, sadly.  And still, like a lost arm taunting an amputee, I craved the pleasure of eating.  Albeit in between sneezes.

The children watched me with bemusement.  They enjoy …Read on

I woke up to discover my daughter had grown breasts.  And not tiny little mosquito bites that mother’s proudly point out or gingerly giggle at with the ease of time on your side.  Breasts.  Full-fledge-get-me-a-real-bra-this-Target-crap-ain’t-cutting-it breasts.  It was a tragic moment for me.  A sense of loss overwhelmed my caffeine-deprived body as my eleven-year old pounced on my husband and I to wake us from our Saturday morning slumber.  “Wake up!  Wake up!” she shouted.  Her giggle was still the same.  The twinkle in those gorgeous eyes.  The only addition was the extra perky body part I refused to acknowledge.

‘It’s the end!’ I screamed to the world from under my covers.  ‘The end!’

“No mom, we have one more day of summer,” my daughter corrected, oblivious to my symbolic moment of doom.  My husband peeked under and gave me a sympathetic …Read on