We celebrated my husband Bob’s 70th birthday by easing him out of his comfort zone with a raft trip down the Delaware River. Joining us were our children Joshua and Joanna and Dave Greenbaum – a wonderful potter and Bob’s partner in the BlueStone Gallery

By Suzanne Braun Levine

When my mother died recently at 94, I felt sad at losing her, but also relieved after several years of slow decline during which I always felt I was one degree of deterioration behind in caring for her. And I felt grateful – grateful to her for the loving and gracious way she took her slow leave, and very grateful to the Hospice team that guided our last months together. Thanks to them, she died at home, smiling to the end.
I …

Tito (short for Gatito, little cat) is the newest addition to our household. My daughter found him in an alley in Buenos Aires, where she has been living for the past two years. He was a half-starved kitten, infested with fleas. She took him in, dealt with the fleas, and now he is a feisty – and very long – fellow.
When she moved back from Argentina last month, Tito came with her. He didn’t enjoy the 16-hour plane ride, but he took over our apartment as soon as he …

 
Today I walked by the empty and padlocked playground of the elementary school in my neighborhood. Closed for the summer! I think back to when my kids were growing up: waiting for the yellow bus to bring them back – always slightly damp – from day camp; then in later years sewing on name tags and filling up trunks for four weeks of outdoor living; and finally after dropping them off, the peace and quiet at home. But I don’t miss the cost.
It was hard for families like mine …

DOING WHAT DAD WANTS TAKES A NEW TWIST!
Both our children are far away this year, so Father’s Day won’t be about the whole family “Doing What Dad Wants.” But it most definitely won’t be a joyless day. Instead, for my husband Bob and me it will be a celebration of “Dad’s Amazing New Project” – the BlueStone Gallery in Milford, PA (www.bluestonegallerymilford.com) which both our kids love.
We will be spending the afternoon where “Dad is Doing What He Wants.” In the past year, my husband has envisioned, brought to …

I have recently entered a new chapter in the story of my life – as measured in feline companions: cat slave once-removed. My 22-year-old daughter just became the unprepared savior of an eight-week-old kitten. She is understandably apprehensive about taking on the responsibility but also delighted at the prospect of establishing a home of her own, as cats do.
I smile at her anxiety and at the thought that she will look back on this as a chapter in her life identified by the cat in it. My first cat Archie …

Not long ago I came across some letters I had written home from camp. The envelopes were marked S.W.A.K. (For those who weren’t preteens back then, that stands for “Sealed With A Kiss.”) In the same shoe box were a few stilted “newsy” letters that my parents, who had no vocabulary for that kind of correspondence, had sent me – and several letters from friends. I recognized the handwriting on just about every one. After all, we had signed each others autograph books, corresponded over many summers and, in several …

Recently I was stunned to hear that a couple I have known – and, to tell the truth, envied – for years have gotten divorced. They always seemed so loving, so intimate, so supportive with each other. For over twenty years, they worked together, they traveled together, and I would often see them jogging together – in an uncanny synchronicity of strides. What went wrong? Like everyone who hears of such an unexpected break-up, I want to find out; and not only because of their marriage, but to understand grown-up …

My husband and I are leaving on the trip of a lifetime in early February. We are going to India for three weeks – to visit sites and spas and to make a pilgrimage to the southernmost tip of the country, where my late brother spent several transformative years. My husband is looking forward to it with all his characteristic energy and curiosity. I, on the other hand, am dreading it – not the vacation, but the going away.
Anne Morrow Lindburgh identified a common reluctance to set out on a …

At the start of our multi-decade marriage, my husband and I had a Noah’s Ark social life. In the evenings anyway, we went out with other couples; single friends were for lunch. Around the time that I stopped performing such housewifely functions as putting the very heavy bedspread on the bed in the morning (to lug it off again only hours later), I got up the nerve to make an occasional dinner date on my own – usually with a woman friend and usually on a night when my husband …