Category: Hartford Magazine
-
On a recent vacation I discovered an extraterrestrial in the bathroom of my hotel. In the dim lighting provided by the same folks who outfit parking garages, I could see it standing by the sink. With pale, dimply skin, wiry hair and squinty eyes, it wore the same startled expression as me. Terrified, I watched…
-
It happens at least once a year and I can almost always tell it’s coming by the anxious and questioning look on his face when he says “Hon…?” I wait for it. “Why am I sick?” After nearly three decades together, I’m still not sure if my husband actually wants me to answer this with…
-
The late British actor and comedian Norman Wisdom perhaps said it best: “As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes … and I can’t remember the other two.” It’s an amusing quote, but one that also hits home for any number of older adults who, along with needing reading glasses…
-
Do you take your daughter, the future bride, and promise to love her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, as long as you both plan for this wedding? Yes? Great. Then, with the power vested by the engagement, you are now pronounced Mother of the Bride. Weddings are both exciting and stressful,…
-
We’ve all the seen the disturbing photos. Like evidence from some sort of fashion crime scene, they are images of women wearing frozen grimaces, shellacked hair, and uncomfortable bouffant dresses in cotton candy pink, some even with matching lace umbrellas. For years, bridesmaids just had to grin and wear it, no matter what gown the…
-
It’s lunchtime on a warm day and “Abby” is seated in a booth at an upscale West Hartford restaurant. She scans the menu for dishes she hasn’t already tried before a waiter, who has no idea that she’s anything but a casual diner, comes by to take her order. Like many of her restaurant visits,…
-
Most days I enjoy going to the grocery store about as much as I like scooping the litter box. With both, I’m required to use cheap, plastic bags that allow everything to dump out of the bottom, and whatever I end up picking out is almost always something I don’t want. That probably explains why…
-
The tires of my Ford Escort crunched on snow-packed roads while the defroster rattled in a futile attempt to melt the fractal ice collecting on my windshield. It was close to midnight on Christmas, 1985, and I was returning home after dropping my boyfriend off at his house. The welcoming smell of a wood stove…
-
In August of 2014, Roy Cross gave his wife a kiss goodbye before leaving for a motorcycle ride with a friend. Several hours later she got a call that there had been an accident. “I was just expecting maybe a broken arm,” said Susan Berck-Cross of Niantic, “or maybe he just needed a new pair…
-
Somewhere between middle and high school, right around the time my hormones were reporting more traffic than the Port Authority, I started watching football. It wasn’t because I was into sports; in fact, far from it. What caught my attention was the appealing buffet of butts in an assortment of shapes and sizes; all poured…
Sarah Lemire 