Mary Novaria

Mary (left) and Catharine at my parents wedding in 1958. My parents named me after my two grandmothers, Mary and Catharine. I have no memories of my paternal grandmother Mary, who died before I was 2 years old, but Catharine, my mother’s mother, was my beloved Grammy. For most of my childhood we lived a thousand miles from her, but she visited for weeks-long stretches during many summers and occasionally over Christmas. A few times we road-tripped from Chicago to Boston to see Grammy, my mom’s siblings and my cousins. Grammy loved to get mail. “Just write and tell me you went uptown and got a stick of gum,” she’d say. So I would and she’d write back, always slipping in a few dollars she probably couldn’t afford, the same way she did with birthday cards. Regrettably, I didn’t save the letters, but I recently came across one she’d written to my mom. Isn’t the national campaign crazy? Just now, I think that the best candidate for the Presidency is Robert ...

As seen in Lessons for a struggling empty nester,  from a family of eagles By Mary Novaria   May 22 (iStock) They called it an “accidental fledge.” The 73-day-old bald eagle wasn’t expected to make his first flight for at least another week or two, but while hopping on branches around the nest and flapping his wings, the eaglet slipped, fell to the ground and sent thousands of online viewers into a panic. Was he injured? Would he be safe on his own? Will he ever come back to the nest? And, when nightfall came and he had yet to return, Was he alive? These are the very same questions I asked when my depressed and anxious teenage daughter ran away from home and, later, when she moved out on her own. Even now that she is healthy, married and in her twenties, I am sometimes tempted to ask them because I am a fledgling when it comes to this empty nest thing. Continue reading here...

I reach for the bananas in the grocery store and feel an unexpected pang of sadness. Out of the blue, I miss my mother.   Over years of her decline, I chauffeured her on errands and sighed deeply when she admitted she’d meant to make a list, but…   I knew what would be on the list—muffins, butter pecan ice cream and bananas—but I wanted her to write it all down. Addled by dementia, not only did she forget to make shopping lists, she often couldn’t remember how to use her cell phone or turn on the TV. I knew it wasn’t her fault. Even so, there were times when my patience wore thin. If only she could jot down a few grocery items on a piece of scrap paper or the back of an envelope, I could take it as a sign that she still had some faculties. Twenty months after her death, here I am frozen in momentary grief in front of the banana stand. We didn’t agree on bananas. I preferred them firm and still tinged with green, she agreed with Chiquita Banana’s recommendati...

As seen in the Huffington Post.   I was careless with my skin as a teen and now I’m terrified of getting skin cancer like my father. Even though my fair, Irish skin would freckle and burn it didn’t stop me from trying to achieve that golden glow featured in glossy magazine ads for Hawaiian Tropic and Bain de Soleil. I envied my girlfriends who tanned so easily and were burnished and brown after just one afternoon at the pool or the tennis court. My mom brought what we used to call “suntan lotion” on family vacations. The smell of Coppertone still takes me back to Hampton Beach on the New England shore. In fact, those Coppertone billboards with a little dog pulling down a blond, pigtailed girl’s swimsuit bottoms were a staple of my childhood. Still, my mother was nowhere near the sunscreen police that I became with my kids. They’re fair like me—a blonde and a redhead—and I slathered them with SPF 50 practically from the moment they were born. I knew my vigilan...