You can Google a lot of blah blah about why we mustn’t wear this or that before Memorial Day. My mother knew better.
Grow up without a camera, and your eyes—and ears, nose, and sense of taste and touch—record what’s imperative to save. I’m grateful for the secret album in my mind, its images sharp and bright, miraculously impervious to the blight of memory loss that robs of me of names and birth dates.
On the last Wednesday before Nowruz, it’s traditional to build bonfires and jump over them; the act symbolizes not only crossing from one year to the next but turning illness into health.
If you're over 40, you're definitely old enough to wear black pearls.
In "The Pollan Family Table" you're apt to find clues to a childhood culinary treasure that was never codified, that you’ve hungered after for decades. That’s where my grandmother comes in.
How to handle the compulsion to say something in response to a sneeze? It’s so ancient and pervasive an impulse that the Internet runneth over with folklore and theory: Your heart stops when you sneeze; the devil flies up your nostrils . . .
At the "Thrill of Seeing" exhibition: Look at the Miró-esque palette, the soft edges, in the Albers! Note the Albers-ish geometric riff on the right in the Miró! Can it be that these two beauties were created an ocean away from each other, three and a half decades apart? Zowie!
Imagine if, when I met her, I'd known that Maya Angelou was my clan-mate, a part of my mishpocha. Instead of murmuring how honored I was, I could have called her Cuz.
The family game board permits a singular and wonderful emotional experience: You play to win, but take pleasure in the triumphs of your opponents—who are, after all, people you love.
What a dream of a forecast! At last, a Sunday that will live up to its name, Weather Underground promised when I consulted it on Thursday. So why am I steaming? Why (oh, forgive me) am I hoping for just a wee drop of rain?
"Semifreddo" means “half-cold” in Italian, but there’s nothing mezzo mezzo about this glorious dessert.
Just to prove we’re not curmudgeons, we’ll have champagne and caviar. We’ll kiss at midnight. I’ll feel loved and lucky. And next December, something will trigger that "uh-oh" feeling again.