Slipping Through Our Fingers

We were sitting around the kitchen table in our rented condo with R’s parents and my father.  The wine was flowing, and the kids had already scattered from the table, enjoying the 72 degree breezes coming in from our open doorwall.  It was the first day of our annual sojurn to Florida for Christmas.  R [...]

Drinking Alone

I was sitting alone, on the sofa that Thursday night in November.  It was quiet save for the sound of the television in front of me and the occasional clink of my wine glass on the table as I lifted it and placed it back down.  I hadn’t eaten dinner, but the plate of chocolate [...]

Lock, Stock and Veiled Threats

I stared at the second page of our local paper in disbelief.  There it was, my name, my full name.  Not mentioned in an article about how the four of us had gone to an information session to learn how to be a good board of education member, or how we’d met with the chair [...]

Worried

“I’m tired,” Tom said sheepishly, sitting down as the crowd at the local senior center dwindled. My girlfriends and I had been invited by our first selectman to join him for a campaign appearance at the town senior center; this was a tough crowd for anyone running for our local board of education.  Since we [...]

My Father’s Birthday

We were sitting in the breakfast area of the Hampton Inn with my father. It was Labor Day weekend, and this year, my father’s 70th birthday fell on the Saturday of that weekend. Two years ago, R’s mother had thrown a splashy, expensive party for his father when he’d turned 70.  We didn’t have enough [...]

Welcome to Politics

“What the hell is this?” I said into the phone while simultaneously scanning the news story online.  I wasn’t exactly used to seeing my name in the news, though it had happened several times through my education advocacy work.  But this, this was different. It was September, and my three girlfriends and I were running [...]

Here We Go Again

“Can I talk to you?” R asked, not looking up from his computer screen. “Sure,” I said, drawing out the word to show my confusion at the request.  It was a warm Saturday afternoon in August, and I was bustling around with laundry and tidying.  The kids were watching TV downstairs in the artificial cool [...]

The Price of Winning

We stood around the kitchen island, toasting our victory in this year’s budget battle. It had been hard fought.  We’d had two elections where the votes came within several hundred votes, but we still had been unable to convince voters that a small tax increase was better than the cuts that were inevitable if the [...]

Make It A Good One

“Oh, boy,” I said as I walked off of the elevator and saw the Holiday Inn’s lobby full of people. “What?” asked my friend Sue, slowing her pace and stepping off to the side with me. “He’ll be here any minute.  That’s why all of those women are congregated there.”  My eyes scanned the group [...]

Philosophical Differences

“What the heck is this?” I said, handing over our town’s local paper to the person sitting next to me. We were at our First Selectman’s home on a Saturday morning in April.  He’d invited my group of education advocates over plus a few of his political allies in town to discuss the budget defeat [...]