Metro Pulse

Midpoint by Stephanie Piper: I pass it on my way to work every day, the stone sign on Kingston Pike now heaped with flowers and balloons and handwritten tributes. Two weeks ago, it simply marked a church, a place of compassion and peace. A place to breathe a little easier and sit a little quieter and feel the strength of community. A place where children were rehearsing a play whose signature song is “Tomorrow.” Full story »

Midpoint by Stephanie Piper: Here is what I used to think: that I would always feel 26. Or even 35. I rejected the relentless march of time. Blessed with good health and a family tree of vigorous, long-lived women, I figured my odds of reaching an advanced age without visible signs of decrepitude were better than average. And for a while, they were. Married at 20, a mother at 21, I enjoyed a long run as the youngest parent on the playground bench and the PTA board. When my oldest child started college, I was still on the fair side of 40. I had energy to spare. I had years to burn. Full story »

Midpoint by Stephanie Piper: In search of the ultimate blunt cut, I strayed up and down Kingston Pike to a string of different salons and a parade of different stylists. Some of them were good and some of them were adequate and each of them had contradictory techniques coupled with strong opinions. Full story »

Midpoint: I am an amateur gardener, a hit or miss tiller of the soil. I may talk the talk about bone meal and mushroom compost, but don’t quiz me too closely. My successes are more likely to be accidents than the result of careful cultivation. The shoulder-high phlox and burgeoning loosestrife in my small perennial bed grew tall under their own steam. At the nursery, I head for the aisle marked “foolproof” or “never fail.” Full story »

Midpoint She was everything that I am not: raven-haired, practically weightless, indomitably perky. Sweet-tempered. Obliging. Patient. If she hadn’t been a cocker spaniel, she might have been real competition for me. What woman could stand comparison to another female who never snapped or judged and asked only for affection, a soft bed, and two squares a day? Full story »

You know you’re getting old(er) when The Big New Thing is something you remember as a perfectly ordinary feature of everyday life. It makes you wonder if there really are only about 10 major ideas that govern human existence, and they fade in and out of vogue and are rediscovered and repackaged every other generation. Full story »

It’s Valentine’s Day, which ranks right up there with New Year’s Eve on the Great Expectations scale. This is the holiday that transports us back to third grade and the Valentine Mail Box on the teacher’s desk. You remember: Everyone “mailed” their cards the day before. Then, on the 14th, the teacher opened the box and distributed the contents. If your desktop was covered with white envelopes, you were an eight-year-old hottie. If not, well…do the math. In the self-esteem sweepstakes, it was winner take all. Full story »

So there I am, pushing my shopping cart doggedly along the cereal aisle, weighing the merits of calcium-fortified over maximum fiber and feeling every year of my advanced chronological age. And then, bam! Out of nowhere, it’s Little Eva on the supermarket speakers, doing the “Loco-Motion” like it’s 1962. “Jump up/Jump back/Well, I think you got the knack, whoa-oh.” The decades fall away and suddenly I’m improvising a bouncy little dance move in front of the Raisin Bran. For a risk-averse, play-by-the-rules Catholic school graduate, I’m a pretty good dancer. And at 5:30 p.m. on a bleak winter Tuesday, Little Eva is better than a B-12 shot. Full story »