At first glance he looks like Hal Holbrook in stage makeup after too many years on a tanning bed, but then you get to those blue eyes (those eyes!) and that slow smile (that smile!) and the wrinkles fade away.
July 31, 2006
July 30, 2006
190/365 Edith
“Have you always been this sweet?” I asked the elderly volunteer. A widow who left her home to be near her daughter, she smiled all the time. “Heavens, no,” she replied. “I’m no longer at the mercy of my hormones.”
July 29, 2006
189/365 The Secretarial School Owner
“I cannot in all good conscience recommend hiring Susan,” the crisp white vellum letter read. “Although she has demonstrated proficiency in typing and other office skills, she persistently refuses to wear a hat.” (Oh, boy—this one really dates me!)
July 28, 2006
188/365 John
“All she did was pull up her nightgown and lie there,” he told a bunch of us, explaining why he got a divorce. Our silence gave a unified response: You got a hell of a lot more than you deserved.
July 27, 2006
187/365 Bebe
If it were 100º outside and we were all in shorts and tank tops, Bebe would still be decked out in earrings, bracelets and necklace. She’s just not dressed without her jewelry. Or lipstick. Or mascara. Or barely discernable bossiness.
July 26, 2006
186/365 Sister Therese
“Oh, that’s a nice name,” she said upon hearing one. She smiled her secret nun smile, but of course her sleuthing students knew, and buzzed about it for hours afterward, adding it to the classified dossier: Her real name’s Armstrong!
July 25, 2006
185/365 Regina
“You are my pride and my job,” she wrote to my dad, making a Freudian typo. One of many women who chased him shamelessly after my mother died, she was the boldest and the one I remember best. And worst.
July 24, 2006
184/365 Jessica’s Mother
“I don’t like him either,” Jessica’s mother said on the phone, referring to her sleazy husband. Oh, no! I never dreamed my third-grader would tell Jessica, her classmate, why I’d refused to let my daughter sleep over at her house.
July 23, 2006
183/365 Cosmo
“Acrobats, I tell you,” he said, sounding like Kramer speaking to Seinfeld. “They were acrobats!” I stopped him before he revealed way more than I wanted to know about this 63-year-old’s experience with two young women he met on vacation.
July 22, 2006
182/365 Dr. P, Veterinarian
I found his South African accent charming, and his terminology as well. His cats don’t hiss at each other; they “blow” at them. And a new cat’s ear mites “worry her terribly.” The culture shock of moving here worries him.
