But the title of this post has nothing to do with my mother or my father, but rather with my grandmother, Helen Cook, nee Moeller. My grandmother was a very important person in my life; I spent a lot of time with her and I loved her deeply,
For a long time I have been saying what a wonderful life and what fantastic luck I have had, to have been alive at a time when I haven`t had to go through any wars, not personally anyway. The wars I have heard about have been far away and have not touched my life in … Continue reading AND THEN… THERE WAS WAR
One morning towards the end of the Great Pandemic of 2020, Lily suddenly looked out of the window, across the red tile roofs of the town, through the greenness of the trees and up into the cloud dotted sky and, for the first time in many, many years asked herself, or the Universe, or whatever, … Continue reading 2020: THE YEAR OF CLEAR VISION (a story)
Yesterday, someone I love very much called me crying (this was a man and I had never heard him cry before) and said: “You have to see the Michael Moore film: Planet of the Humans (https://planetofthehumans.com/) which started playing on YouTube on Monday and is going to run free for 30 days. I turned on … Continue reading ONCE MORE…SOYLENT GREEN
It’s here, there’s no doubt… it’s blooming, exploding, all around. I can see it, I can smell it, I can feel it in the warm, lush air. SPRING… I am happy… How can I be anything but happy? When I leave my small apartment to walk to the bakery and get my morning croissant (a … Continue reading SPRING HAS SPRUNG…
I used to watch the News every morning… in French. It was to practice my French, I said, so while I was dressing I would turn on the TV and watch the news. Sometimes, if there was a particularly interesting or frightening or world-changing story I would actually stop dressing, sit on the bed and … Continue reading NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS
“So slow down, friend. Take a deep and conscious breath. Trust the place where you are, the place of ‘no answers yet’, the precious place of not knowing. This place is sacred, for it is 100% life. It is full of life, saturated with life, dripping with life, drenched with life. Don’t try to rush … Continue reading LOCKDOWN ‘FALLOUT’
March 17, 2020 Again, I awake at 5 a.m. Again the mind begins to race: Am I coughing, does my throat feel funny, what am I going to do if I get sick, who will take care of Salomé… on and on. Stop!!! I tell my mind that as soon as it is light we … Continue reading LOCKDOWN: DAY 1
Well maybe all this is enough for the present; heaven can wait. What have I done to be gifted such joy. I mean it, to live in this fantastic, beautiful, friendly little French town where, when it doesn’t rain and the sky is blue, it is the bluest of skies I have ever seen. Ok, … Continue reading ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO…
It is incredible how much a small dog can disrupt a life. This was not what I believed. Quite the opposite: ‘She’s so tiny: she’ll be no problem, make no noise, disturb not… Just a small dog.’ I should have looked more closely at the matter. After all, a flea in the wrong place –like … Continue reading A SMALL DOG
Writing a life 