Memorial Day

Ma Vie En Rose by Buck Jones She doesn’t come into our little café but once a week, but when she does, oh my. It’s her smile that grabs your heart, and as she walks over to give you the obligatory bisous greeting of a kiss on each cheek, the conversation is quick and easy. Long retired from being a professor at one of the local universities on the Left Bank of Paris, she and her boyfriend (a retired diplomat) sit at their favorite table and they order a coupe of champagne each. That’s what they always order, and for the next hour or so, they canoodle. She leans into

Excerpt from Rhinestones on My Flip-Flops My daughter, Caroline, loved watching Peter Pan when she was a little girl. She was glued to the television and loved every minute of the animated movie. After watching the movie, she pretended to fly around the house just like Peter Pan. On one occasion, I was upset over something, and my sweet Caroline, always a tender child, was very sensitive to my feelings. Her sweet face turned toward mine and her big brown eyes looked at me. She said, “Momma, tink happy taughts. Momma! Tink happy taughts!” she repeated. Then she said something I will never forget: “Momma if you tink happy taughts,

It made me think of the wasted opportunities that are lost to little foxes of “doubt” — about stories never written, journeys never taken, loves never known, truths never told — because of the little foxes of doubt nibbling at the edges of our confidence and courage. “Little foxes,” she said. My friend and I were walking with dogs. It was early morning, late autumn. We were discussing everything and nothing. And we were not walking too near to each other, which somehow prohibits the natural sharing of confidences. But we had been talking about something — I can’t remember exactly what — that concerned small worries, the kind that