Love Notes

There's something so tender about the early evening in a city, when the streets dim and windows begin to glow, revealing little vignettes of life inside.   A woman with an apron at her kitchen sink.  A lamp turned on beside a favorite chair.  A flicker of warmth from a fireplace.

I came across the photograph above and couldn't stop staring. 

I couldn't stop staring  ...  and imagining.  It's got to be Paris right?  What is the woman with the apron making for dinner?  Gougères I bet.  Yum, my favorite.  Who does the leg in the window above her belong to?  Her son or daughter?  Or a stranger in another apartment?  Or a perhaps a handsome stranger she'll fall in love with in the film adaptation spinning about in my head.  What scent does our undoubtedly beautiful apron-clad protagonist wear?  It has to be French, of course.  It's turns out to be the leg-man's mother's signature scent too, and that's how they strike up a conversation in the elevator.  READ MORE

Read more

Read more

“At one magical instant in your early morning or late afternoon, you will see the light - light so extraordinary that it seems to have come from another world.”

There’s a hush that falls when the day turns the corner toward evening and the light becomes golden - that fleeting hour when a ray of sun slips through the window as if carrying a secret message.  Beyond the glass, it softens everything it touches: the lapping waves on a New England rocky coast, a small Virginia garden gone quiet, a strand of pearls on my studio table catching the glow.

Photographers call it the magic hour - that post sunrise or late afternoon sun that illuminates a subject, almost as if a glow were lit from within.   READ MORE

Read more

She isn't the one in a mink coat or on magazine cover.  She's the one who smiles and waves while pulling in the garbage cans, who listens intently, who shows up, who makes the most of what she has.    She's Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat in the air, a little uncertain, a little brave, and completely herself. 

The girl next door is the gold standard, not because she shines the brightest, but because her light is real.  She is warmth.  She too sometimes has wobbly mornings, but she draws a breath, adjusts her shoulders, and steps forward anyway.

And Mary Tyler Moore remains, for many of us, the gold standard of the girl next door.  (Before her, it was Antonia Shimerda, in this writer's opinion).   READ MORE

Read more

Good things come in small boxes.  And sometimes with small price tags too.  Today, we're looking at little treasures.

Are you familiar with the lover's eye?

It all began in the late 1700s, when King George IV (then the rakish Prince of Wales) went to the opera and that evening fell madly in love with Maria Fitzherbert.   She was a Catholic, a widow and a commoner; he was heir to the throne.  Marriage was thrice forbidden.   While this deterred Mrs. Fitzherbert, George was relentless in his pursuit of passion, and in a gesture as secret as it was romantic, he sent her a tiny portrait of his own eye, painted in watercolor on ivory.   READ MORE

Read more