During the winter of 1988, my husband and I thought it would be a fun weekend trip to visit Quebec City’s winter carnival and stay at the luxury hotel Le Chateau Frontenac. My 16-year-old daughter, Liza, wanted to bring her friend Mel. So, off we went, making the journey from Bangor to the Jackman border […]

This story begins Jan. 15, 2016, at 3:29 a.m., with the birth of my twin grandsons at 29 weeks, or about 11 weeks premature. However, the story goes back even before that, when my daughter Jennifer Evans was admitted four weeks prior to their birth for strict bed rest at Maine Medical Center. After their […]

Thinking ahead to the empty nest in our near future, my husband and I took up a new hobby: We purchased road bikes and signed up for a three-day charity bike ride. We asked our teenage daughters if they wanted to ride with us, but they were busy with their friends and jobs. They played […]

“Halt!” The command issued from a uniformed police officer with the impact of a thunderclap. The target was a Harrison student just beginning his junior year in high school. The command touched off a timely re-evaluation by the student of his perceptions of authority. Useful then, humorous now. For generations, Maine young men treated engagement […]

Sometimes gravity is our friend, sometimes not. From the 1950s through the 1980s, every Thanksgiving and Christmas were opportunities to learn about my family from what we called the “Gus and Joe” stories. My father, Gus, born in 1909, and his older brother Joe, born in 1907, lived through the transitional period as Maine went […]

Laughter was a prominent memory cherished with our parents. Since the passing of both my mother and father, life has not been the same. Our family was fortunate to have loving, caring parents who made countless sacrifices raising six kids, always placing us before their own needs. Money was a struggle; they worked long, hard […]

“Shh, do you hear that?” Carol, my best friend from first grade on, and I were in our mid-30s and her daughter Meg about 7 when we were on one of our frequent camping trips. We were camping in Acadia. One night, it seemed we had just drifted off to sleep when we heard a […]

I thought by now I might move on from writing about my husband, Mike’s, passing last December. I realize now it isn’t so easy to muffle the journey. Even though we knew Mike’s time was limited, there were some things neither of us were able to face that would make it easier for me after […]

It was past 8 on a fall evening when I wrapped up my final parent conference and shut off the lights to my classroom. All I wanted to do was head for home, put my feet up by the woodstove and sip the allotted 5 ounces of red wine. However, I had promised my husband […]

I’m with my best friend Sherry and my younger sister. We’ve walked a mile with Sherry to her home so that Sherry can collect her things to spend the night at my house. It’s dusk. I’m 14. There are no street lamps. The backyards face into miles of woods. The interior lights from the houses […]