I came as a corporate wife, dragging my heels, nurturing a secret hope that this would be a short stop on the way to another big city like the ones I’d left behind. Knoxville was still basking in the glow ...

I’m over multi-tasking. I realize that it’s a highly prized skill here in the second decade of the 21st century, right up there with extreme couponing and ice-road trucking. But for me, the thrill is gone.

I’m wondering if maybe it’s time to go home.

There was a time when peace meant the absence of conflict. Now it’s invoked to describe every imaginable condition from manageable hair to financial security.

I’m not interested in naughty and nice. Let someone else worry about that. Me, I’m counting sheets and towels and frozen lasagnas.

My personal saints have no marquee value. They do not appear on any calendar or stained glass window. There are no statues of them in parish churches. If I told you their names, you would not recognize them as spiritual ...

Wisdom, I have come to believe, lies in accepting one’s limitations while not using them as an excuse for laziness, whining, or general laxity.

So here we are again in the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness that Keats wrote about, the long, languid autumn that redeems the brutal summer. The light has begun to soften, filtering through leaves whose green is deeper now, ...

I don’t like crowds. I don’t like noise. I don’t like funnel cake. I don’t like giant cartoon characters looming over me like neon-colored predators, nor do I want to stand on line for three hours to hyperventilate on the ...

And then, out of nowhere, the moment arrives when the antique charm of your childhood becomes the stuff of legend.

One in five lottery winners ends up broke in three years. I read this statistic and shake my head. The people who lose it all are careless and gullible. They make bad investments. They fall for every sob story. They ...

I am standing in the front hall with three small grandchildren, bundling them into jackets against the April chill. It is 9 a.m. on the first day of my week as caregiver. Breakfast eaten: check. Kitchen tidy: not really. Children ...

It’s here again. The evidence is overwhelming. The pink tree outside my building is in bloom, and the grass is full of those little blue flowers that are weeds but still incredibly delicate and heart-stirring and seem to cry out ...

Clicking my way through TV’s vast wasteland (300 channels and nothing to watch) on a recent evening, I met an old friend.

A recent tumble down a steep driveway has left me with a broken foot, a painful shoulder, and a bad case of powerlessness.