Monthly Archives: July 2011

I have never been a religious person. Born into an orthodox Jewish family, I was dismayed by the exclusivity, the narrowness, the restrictions. I wanted to be like everyone else. In childhood, I couldn’t see the differences between Christians and … Continue reading →

For almost half a century I was married to an anthropologist, and we moved around the world studying other cultures and their rites of passage.  I have this week undergone my own rite of passage.  I visited two Independent Living … Continue reading →

For three weeks I have been living without properly seeing anything. I cannot see my face in the mirror. I see shadows. An occasional glimpse of a much older, wizened woman—who bears very little resemblance to the Sheila I knew. … Continue reading →

I have thus far spurned audio books. I love to read and listening to audio books, it seemed to me, was a kind of cheating. The very words on the page are a part of the greatness of the book, … Continue reading →

My eyesight has been stolen by fucking macular degeneration. No intensifier would be better than this one for this rotten lousy disease. It got my left eye many years ago, but my stalwart right eye prevailed until a month ago, … Continue reading →

Late one night in December 1979, I stood angrily  on a dark, deserted, snowy, street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my hand in my pocket, my fingers curled tightly around a large, jagged rock.  My husband, who was convinced that this venture … Continue reading →

After I sent my novella to Harvard University Press I had several ideas about what to write next, but it seemed like a natural time for a hiatus, a short period of relative leisure.  I was most pleasantly preoccupied; Harvard’s … Continue reading →