“I guess you had a hard time sleeping last night!” our 80-year-old next-door-neighbor shouted out to Alan, as we emerged from the house one morning to take a walk. Our neighbor waved to us from his kitchen porch, a location from which he had an excellent view of our house, driveway, and yard. “I saw…

Shrieeeeek! Alan and I sit up in bed. “Oh crap,” he says. Shrieeeeeeeeek! Driven by a horrible, high-pitched sound we both jump out of bed. Our dog and cat scramble into the closet to hide. It’s 2:30 in the morning. “Why do we have to have these stupid alarms?” I yell, as if it is…

I wake up late, 7 in the morning, in the guest room of my mother’s house in Florida. For a second I am lost, my mind operating in the time that was the day-before-yesterday, or last week. One night, there’d been a knock on the door at 2 a.m., from the nurse worried about Mom’s…

“When you look over your shoulder And you see the life that you’ve left behind When you think it over, do you ever wonder? What it is that holds your life so close to mine.” – Jackson Browne, You Love the Thunder   The music starts rolling in months before our 40th high school reunion….

Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, In things best known to you, finding the best, or as good as              the best, In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest; Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place – not             for another hour but this hour……

My friend Leah and I have started meeting for a weekly walk around Breckenridge. I do not remember whose suggestion this was, but I do remember that the idea surfaced around the same time that it occurred to me: I have not exercised in a year. We decided to limit our walks to one hour…

It’s 5 o’clock at the Palisade Café. The chef called in an hour earlier with news of a broken tooth – he won’t be showing up to oversee tonight’s wine tasting dinner. That, and about half a dozen other emergencies have owner John Sabal in high gear as he manages tonight’s shift in course at…

The sky lightens early these days, and by five a.m. I am awake. Bed is comfortable and my husband, solid and fast asleep, is warm beside me. But I am awake now, and restless, and I slide out from under the covers. I look for my bathrobe and slippers and my dog gets up to…

Taos, New Mexico. May 3. In the Ortenstone Delattre gallery in Taos, as Alan and I were looking at this lovely print, Silver Apples of the Moon, the elderly artist Pierre Delattre walked up behind us and recited the beautiful poem by W.B. Yeats: I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in…

My boss stopped by my desk to chat, and as we talked she glanced over my shoulder at my computer screen. She squinted, focusing on my Inbox. “Do you know you’ve got over 1,000 unread emails? Wow, I could never stand that.” Over 1,000? Was it really that many? Embarrassed, I mumbled something about being…