“I’m getting a lot of stares, but I think it’s because everyone is jealous.” I texted my friend from my seat on the airplane. “I feel very Covid-safe, and they probably don’t.”

The text accompanied a photo I took of myself in the full-length, airport bathroom mirror about a half an hour earlier. In it, I’m wearing my colorful face mask which features images of Dr. Fauci, my glasses, jeans and a sweatshirt, as well as my black compression socks and new-ish Birkenstocks.

My daughter, who I was taking the two hour flight up north to visit, said it was…

I got the bill for my homeowners insurance recently and got very confused. There’s the usual — dwelling coverage and personal property coverage — but then there was a charge for earthquake coverage — that part threw me. “This is a dad question,” I thought. Only, my dad wouldn’t be helpful. He’s a life-long New Yorker and doesn’t know from earthquakes. Plus, he just turned 80. …

Sometimes I think that my boyfriend is better looking than me. He’s handsome in a way that’s sort of rugged and effortless. He’s not a dude or an accountant. He’s a musician so his handsome is of the artistic variety — a mix of good looks, sex appeal, and charisma.

He’s got a mass of thick dark hair that now has streaks of grey. You could call it salt and pepper, but he’s spicier than either of those. He’s also got a shadow of a beard at all times, a full, sharp nose that I like to trace with my…

…(And Now I See Little Deaths Everywhere)

My husband’s birthday is this month and even though he is no longer with us, my daughter and I will still celebrate. Joel had MS but a few months after he turned 50, he died from complications of Multiple Sclerosis and West Nile Virus. Dying from a mosquito bite seems so quaint in the age of coronavirus.

He has been gone for almost seven years. Seven Years. He has missed the entirety of our daughter’s teenage-hood. Graduations and driving and boys…. And so much more. Our neighborhood alone, thanks to both the economy…

Sometimes, I have no idea what my boyfriend is talking about. He’ll be saying something about someone from work, but halfway through I’ll realize he’s relaying a conversation he overheard at the post office… or he’s telling me a story about what I think is his childhood, but then I discover it’s something from a movie he once saw. It’s not that I’m a bad listener, or that he’s a bad story teller, but I sometimes think we speak different languages.

I love this man. I like him a lot, too. After five years together, we have a really nice…

Most of my married friends hate their husbands right now. One says her husband is lazy and leaves his dirty laundry on the floor…. one is bothered by her husband’s “extra-curricular” activities which on one particular weekend included a raucous boys night out followed by a hazy hangover ….and another friend complains that she just hates the way her husband answers his phone with a “Hi-ya!”

I don’t have the luxury of hating my husband because I’m a widow. …

I went to the weed shop with my twenty-year-old daughter the other night. “I’m running low on weed.” She smiled, “In case you want to go to with me to get more.” I didn’t even pretend to feign shock. My daughter smokes pot and given the current state of the world, now I sort of do, too.

When she was still away at college, one thousand miles from home, and news of the coronavirus was just starting to break, I was in a literal panic. I was afraid of state borders closing. I worried about air travel and the contagiousness…

Walking through a high-end designer pop-up exhibit with my teenage daughter the other day, I fell in love. We were browsing through the gift shop at the end of the exhibit when I saw it — a scarf big enough to call a shawl that was my favorite soft-denim color. It had the classic monogram pattern throughout and my heart stopped. I asked a salesperson how much it cost.

“Isn’t she cute?” he said while looking up the price. “It’s $590.”

“Five hundred and ninety DOLLARS?” my daughter asked.

“I know,” He said. “So reasonable.”

I should mention that this…