As our plane descended toward New York’s LaGuardia Airport, our nine-year-old granddaughter, Emmie, pressed her face to the window. From about three thousand feet, the city lights spread out below us like spilled jewels. “Look, Gigi,” she exclaimed to my wife, Lori, “The whole city is opening up to me.” Lori and I had planned …
Bullying seems epidemic these days. About 19 percent of students ages 12 to 18 reported being bullied during school in 2021–22, and the figure climbs to 26 percent among middle schoolers. For those who are bullied, 22 percent said it happened online or by text, which means there’s no front yard to walk away from. …
Halloween in Park Slope, the Brooklyn neighborhood, is quite an event. Our daughter, Mary, and her husband Peter, live a few blocks away from Park Slope, where Peter’s parents live. So, it was easy for Lori and I to experience a little of it last year when we arrived for our grandson Lionel’s birth. Lori …
Read more “Halloween in Park Slope and the Gift We Couldn’t Buy”
I held my grandson, our eighth grandchild, in my arms. I search for words to describe that feeling: holding someone who is not your own, yet is. A child so fragile and so strong, entering a world of fears and hopes, victories and defeats, hurts and pleasures. And he is unaware of it all. Quietly, …
Driving to an early-morning meeting, I see the break of dawn as upbeat music fills the car, and I feel energy running through my veins. Then, in a matter of moments, I drive through one of those Kentucky knobs; suddenly, I’m hidden in the fog that masks the risen sun. As a light rain patters …