Archive | Age Matters

Love Lost, Love Laureate: Noel Visitations

I woke thinking about Donald Hall, who died last June at the age of 89 after living a very fine life as a poet and a New Englander. There are details of his biography that make me wince, especially his string of very, very young girlfriends. That string included his second wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, who was decades his junior and whom he met while she was still his student.

Though it’s unmodern to think so, Goddess is not always concerned with such details, and in this case Jane and Donald’s love helped them develop as humans and writers. He was wildly proud of his wife’s artistic development, which outstripped his before she succumbed to a voracious cancer a few weeks shy of her 48th birthday. Continue Reading →

December’s Bittersweet Magic

This time of year is always bittersweet for me. When I was a girl, unspoken battles raged between my Episcopalian mother and Jewish father over how much Christmas was going to make it into our house. Since then, I’ve felt guilty if I’ve leaned too far into the pageantry, deprived of magic if I haven’t.

It got more complicated as the years passed and I grew more devoutly alone–do you really get a tree just for yourself? Drag out the ornaments you’ve quietly collected over the years? Continue Reading →

Schlemiel, Schlimazel: Penny Lost

Penny Marshall’s death hits so close to home. Born the same year as my mother, she offered a different model of adult femalehood–screwball funny, radically unpretentious, and trailblazing. A director, a comedian, a Bronx-born broad with gorgeous legs and unfailing creative vision: I still wear an L on my sweater in homage to her Laverne. She was one of my chosen god-mommies though I met her only once, and I’m bereft to learn she’s no longer on our plane. Gen X ladies: We’re really the grownups now.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy