The Thing Is   to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for…

This fall, I’ve been doing a New England “mini-tour” on behalf of the paperback release of Day After Night, my latest novel. I’m not sure why, but the publicist booked me into independent bookstores only: Gibson’s in Concord, New Hampshire, Northshire in Manchester, Vermont, RJ Julia in Madison, Connecticut, Newtonville Books in Newtonville, Massachusetts, and…

It’s awfully hard to start over. It must be. How else to explain the annual orgy of Jewish “ready-set-go” holidays? Rosh Hashanah, the “head” of the year, is merely the starting bell. (And I’m leaving out the whole month of Elul with those shofar blasts telling you to get ready, and Slichot services to loosen…

So this really pretty, interesting-looking woman comes into the car rental office, which is tiny so there’s no way I can avoid overhearing her phone conversation. And then she identifies herself to the less-than-helpful service rep on the other end.  “Jonatha Brooke.” Jim and I turned around to face her. “THE Jonatha Brooke? we gush. (She asked who…

My little girl sat on the bench beside me. It was summertime; we were on vacation near the sea while waiting for the clock to chime our dinner reservation table. This would be one of her first grown-up restaurant meals and we were excited at the prospect. We were people-watching and the newly-popular belly-button ring…

I get invited to talk at temples: big ones and little ones; Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative. As much as I dislike the travel, I like meeting the people, who always make me think. After my presentation at a smallish Midwestern synagogue last spring, I was schmoozing over the dessert table when the rabbi came up…

What do you do with old birthday cards? My friends and family are very good card-givers. Most of the ones I get are truly funny, with a few purely sweet ones. I line them up on the mantlepiece for a few weeks and then I forget they’re there and then I recycle them. I don’t regret my heartlessness even a…

The trees on my street are dying of old age. I learned this fact because I, like many of my neighbors, were concerned about the state of the maples that form a leafy canopy over the asphalt road. And so a committee of concerned citizens found out that these trees were planted about 60 years…