Friends are the flowers in the garden of life—they come in many varieties and they blossom when the conditions are right. Some take their time to show their colors, while others burst into bloom as if by magic. Occasionally, there are those who hibernate, but when they re-emerge, they are the same flower.

When I was a little girl, the Old Testament story about Methuselah was one I found fascinating. It was a true story—I knew that because I’d been taught that the Bible was the word of God and represented truth.

Her name is Gabby and she and I have been friends since she entered the sixth grade at Our Lady Queen of Angels School (OLQA) on 112th Street in East Harlem. That was seven years ago.

A daily distraction in a busy life is the hazard of misplacing things, or more accurately forgetting where items have been left – most often very useful ones: eyeglasses, cell phone, wallet, hearing aids, face mask and on and on. In my office, that can include a favorite pen, even my still warm cup of tea. As the ad for the ghost busting agency in the movie, Ghostbusters, asked (and do pardon the appalling grammar), “Who you gonna call?”

Some holidays are accompanied with fanfare – of the fireworks sort. Others are somber events, celebrated with flags and flowers on gravestones. There are also religious holidays – better known as holy days – which generally entail going to church, and some holidays celebrate history with parades and bands. Mother’s Day falls into none of those categories. It’s a “quiet” holiday – meant just for the family.

It was June 1989 when the movie, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” came out. I gagged at the title – not because the idea of shrinking the kids was abhorrent; it sounded rather whimsical. But because of the title’s egregious grammatical error.

I went to bed that night, trying to stay awake but slipping off to sleep and then waking up on Christmas morning, surprised beyond my wildest imagination, as I stared wide-eyed at the array of games and toys that were loaded under the Christmas tree and bulging out of my stocking. I knew how those presents got there – they came from Baby Jesus – or did they?

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American national holiday - with all due respect to our ‘cousins’ north of the border. It’s been part of our culture since the seventeenth century, when settlers from England and the Netherlands arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts and Jamestown, Virginia.

In the midst of a somber and terrifying time, it can be salutary to occasionally “look on the bright side of life” (Thank you, Eric Idle).

As a diehard New England Patriots’ fan, I was wondering last Saturday how I would get through Super Bowl LIV – would I find myself bored to tears? Torn between which team to root for, I made a last-minute decision to support the Kansas City Chiefs. Why not? They’d been “in the desert” for fifty years, and I’m an underdog lover (except when it comes to the Patriots).

Let’s face reality – to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, “We, the tea drinkers of the United States, get no respect”.  

If you’re a coffee drinker, I can’t expect you to empathize with our plight, but you might think about how you’d feel if the circumstances were reversed – just substitute the word ‘coffee’ for ‘tea’ throughout this lamentation.

The annual Christmas Pageant at school was an event I looked forward to as a young child – but that anticipation was always tinged with a dose of apprehension because the role each of us would play in the pageant was determined by a contest that took place in the classroom.