Letters from Rona / Sort by date

I'd been counting on Diana Nyad to prove that you're never too old to score the success of a lifetime. Instead she proved that there's more to success than achieving the vision in her head. She will never swim from Cuba to Key West, but she did her absolute best and I'll remember her grit next time I shy away from a daunting goal. [more]

I have just spent a week exploring Rome, where every ancient ruin got me wondering, "What would Mr. Milliken say about this?" Frank Milliken, who taught me Latin in Durham, N.H., loved all things Roman the way Julia Child loved sweet butter and Keith Richards loves the blues--with the passion of a convert whose delight becomes a calling. What stories he'd have told about the obelisks plundered from Egypt, the ruined theatre where Caesar met his bloody death on the Ides of March. I suspect our local tour guide had a better handle on the facts, which archeologists are still unearthing. But Mr. Milliken would have told more jokes. He favoured groan-worthy puns, delivered deadpan to work the contrast between his grave demeanour--dark suits, horn-rimmed glasses--and his inner scamp. [more]

Back when Elizabeth Taylor was the world's most scandalous woman, I followed her adventures on the pretext of shopping with my mother. Every supermarket sold Photoplay, and every issue exuded the forbidden scent of lust as only home-wrecking, violet-eyed Liz could inspire it. While my mother filled her cart with egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup, I hung out at the newsstand, drinking in the gossip. [more]

Somewhere on the downward slope of my 50s, I wandered into a boutique much beloved by the fashion crowd, and was talked into buying my first halter top. I found it on the bargain rack, where clothes end up that you have to be mad or a model to wear. The plunging neckline said "Cher on a bad night." The fabric, white eyelet, said, "Eight-year-old's birthday party." [more]

When I was growing up in the days of crinolines and penny loafers, every girl learned three things about breasts. They were not a fitting subject for polite conversation. They drove men wild with desire (hence their prominent display in the kind of magazine not found on anyone's coffee table). They made you a woman, which meant that if you lost a breast to a certain unmentionable disease, you were not a woman anymore. We all heard stories about women who would not show a breast lump to their doctor until cancer had them in a death grip. One woman changed that--former First Lady Betty Ford, who died yesterday at 93. [more]

He was black, I was white. It was 1965 and more than half the states in the union still had laws on the books against inter-racial marriage. Not quite 16, I thought I could rise above the temper of those times. [more]

Every child needs a wise adult friend who knows how to listen--and when to speak up. I learned that a lifetime ago, hanging out in the pokiest of basement apartments with my mother's straight-talking tenant. [more]

The only interactive exhibit at Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta has no touch screen, flashing lights or sound effects. It sits atop a humble wooden desk, as chunky as my grandmother's lace-up oxfords and as solid as her corseted bosom. Its button-size keys demand a firm touch, and its ribbon could use a change. On a manual typewriter like this one, Atlanta's most celebrated daughter composed the 1000-plus pages of Gone With the Wind. When I stopped by one recent Friday morning, the machine had captivated two teenage girls who were pondering the mysteries of this thing called a carriage. A sign on the wall explained how to push it. [more]

My mother never managed to teach me how to roll out pie crust or sew in a zipper, but thanks to her I can spot the bargains at a post-Christmas sale and beat the crowd to the only 80-percent-off sweater in a certain shade of pink---one that shows up in stores about as often as a cockatoo lands in your back yard. She knew just the right place to train me---Filene's legendary basement. [more]

For more than a year I'd been reading news stories on the so-called "bed bug crisis" that had Torontonians pitching their mattresses, bagging their clothes, avoiding their friends and scratching an omnipresent, crazy-making itch. I'd dismissed those reports as hysterical distractions from real urban crises. Then, one week before moving day, my cleaning lady squished a tiny brown bug that had been lurking in our sheets. Out spurted blood. Ours. [more]