In every marriage, there comes a test _ a battle of wills, an ultimate impasse that will end with one question: Are we going to get over this, or not?

For some couples, the test happens several times a day. They clash so often they find themselves longing to live in a state where “The fool needed killing” is justifiable homicide. [Read more…]

Sitting on a bench in front of the school, I closed my eyes, felt the sun on my face and listened.
Children laughing. Parents talking. Cars passing. Crows cawing. A perfect soundtrack for a postcard perfect day.

The crowd was growing, waiting to pick up children. Most of the waiters were rookies, kindergarten parents with toddlers in tow.

Not me. I was a veteran. My three children had all gone to that school. If the PTA gave an award for the most hours spent waiting out in front, I might not win, but I’d be a contender. [Read more…]

On the opening day of Clemson’s football season, I woke early, thinking about my brother and pondering one of life’s more baffling questions: What’s the big deal with some people and college football?

I mean, seriously. Have you ever noticed how giddy some fans get when it’s time for the start of another season? If you didn’t know better, you might think they’d just found a cure for every disease under the sun and gotten a deal for free cable TV. I’m just saying. [Read more…]

Summer is slipping like beach sand through my fingers and I find myself thinking of summers in my childhood, thunderstorms and lightning bugs and sunsets that linger like the smile on the face of someone you love. But most of all, the food. [Read more…]

When someone walks into your life, a story begins. Pay attention. Who knows where it will go or how it will end?

I was a transplanted Southerner trying to take root in California, married only six months when my new husband got his first job teaching and coaching at Monterey High.

It would take almost 10 years for him to move from basic math courses and lower-division sports to teaching physics and coaching varsity basketball. But he was never in a hurry, never in a rush to do anything, really, but his best. All that mattered, he said, was not the status of a job, but how well and how diligently he performed it. [Read more…]

When my phone rang, I lit up like Christmas.

“Hey, school boy!” I said, “How was your first day of school?”

“You don’t have to call me ‘school boy’ any more, Nana,” Randy said. “I already went.”

“So you’re done forever?”

“No,” he said, “just for today!”

Did I mention he is brilliant? He’s barely 5 years old, and already he’s learned to take life one day at a time. Some of us take years to learn that lesson. Lots of us never learn it at all. [Read more…]

Few things are both as beautiful and terrifying as the flash of lightning and the roll of thunder.

I’m sitting at a window on a hillside overlooking Monterey Bay, watching a storm light up the night sky bright as day.

I wish you could see it. [Read more…]

It was the only car I ever picked out and paid for on my own. I bought it not long after losing my first husband to cancer. There was nothing wrong with our old car. It just hauled too many memories.

So I bought a brand new 1999 Nissan Pathfinder.

I wish you could’ve seen it.

I mean, when it was new, before all the nicks, dings, dents and scratches it collected over the years. I’ve collected my share of those, too. [Read more…]

His card will be late. I forgot to mail it. I forget lots of stuff. But I will always remember the boy. So I called him.

“Happy birthday!” I said. “I’m so glad you were born!”

He laughed at my “so glad you were born” tradition. I started it when my kids were little. Now they say it to me. [Read more…]

Once, I went to a zoo to see the penguins. But my favorite thing of all turned out to be the bats.

This is a love story. I’ve told parts of it before. But stories are like love itself: They change and grow and deepen with time.

When I met him, I liked the blue of his eyes and the starch in his buttoned-down collar. But that was about it. He’d just been hired as an editor _ my editor _ at the paper where I worked. I hoped he’d be a good one. I never dreamed he would one day be my husband. [Read more…]