Mary Novaria

Instead of the usual weekday routine, on the day before Thanksgiving, my morning reflections are inspired by the baking of pies. I creep downstairs to a quiet kitchen, put on the kettle for tea, and open the refrigerator to remove the pastry dough I made the evening before and carefully wrapped to chill overnight.  Before peeling and cutting the fruit, I reach for my phone and open the app for our local NPR station. The news is grim. Mass shooting. Again. This time in Virginia. Just days after the one at Club Q in Colorado. Guns, I think, are as American as apple pie. But pie shouldn’t be tainted by senseless murder.  I turn off the news and put on the new Taylor Swift. Nope. A podcast. Ugh. None of it is right. Restless, I lean into the quiet and let the silence speak as I pick up the paring knife and get to work on the apples.  Lime green gets all the attention, but the peel of a Granny Smith is a thing to behold, as bright and crisp to the eye as its flavor is to the p...

Published at Mary's dad with his mum (right) and sister in the early 1940s in Poughkeepsie, New York. We memorialized my father 20 years ago this St. Patrick’s Day.  “Oh, your father would have loved this,” more than a few people said. But I knew my father, who’d died four days prior from heart disease, likely would have been unmoved by sharing the occasion with Ireland’s patron saint.   The youngest son of immigrants and 40 years sober, he’d have rolled his eyes at the holiday many Americans use as an excuse to drink beer and paint themselves green, just as he did regarding New Year’s Eve, which he often proclaimed “amateur night.”  In the early 1970s, my dad took a brief interest in his McAleer roots, even procuring the family coat of arms to display in our suburban Chicago entry hall. A onetime Latin scholar, he frequently reminded my brothers and me of the family motto: Spectemur Agendo -  Let us be judged by our deeds. That was the sum of his investment in ...

  John and I went camping a couple of weeks ago. Toasty fire. Dinner by flashlight. Scrabble by candlelight. “All Things Considered” on a hand-cranked radio. If I’d had more notice, I’d have had the makings of ‘smores on hand. But this wasn’t one of those adventures for which you plan ahead (unless you are one of our overachieving neighbors with a generator). This was an accidental campout.  It began at 7:45 on a Monday morning, when our little rural mountain electric co-op texted that we were part of a widespread outage. That we got the text at all was amazing, since our cell service up here generally ranges from zero to half a bar.  We heat the house with propane, but we need electricity to turn on the furnace. The house was cold and would get chillier as the day wore on. John and I sat in bed and stared at our phones while wearing puffy jackets and stocking caps. No hot coffee. No hot tea. No hot anything. The text from the co-op estimated our power would return betwee...

Published 6/1/2020 Working puzzles used to be something reserved for family beach vacations. On multigenerational trips to South Carolina or Oregon, there has always been a table in a corner with a puzzle in progress. Like two of my sisters in law, I can barely tear myself away while others, like my husband, can’t be bothered.  I’m on my third quarantine picture puzzle, which should be a cinch since it’s only 500 pieces. The nostalgia of a vacation pastime has given way to a daily obsession with both the jigsaw and word variety during coronavirus quarantine. The popular Wordscapes has joined the Scrabble app and Words with Friends on my iPhone, and I also work a daily crossword puzzle. Continue reading here.

An earlier version of this essay appeared in HuffPost on 11/10/2015 I was mortified because I didn’t send thank you notes after my birthday the year my mother died. The flowers had drooped and died, but other presents — a couple of gift cards, an adult coloring book (very Zen), a cuff bracelet — were tangible reminders of my negligence. It’s not like me and I felt guilty. It’s not that I wasn't grateful. I was. And I was raised better than to blow off this time-honored tradition and most basic piece of etiquette. My mom drilled into me as soon as I could write, it seems, the importance of acknowledging a gift-giver’s thoughtfulness and generosity. After every Christmas and birthday she provided me with stationery, stamps and addresses, and hounded me until I wrote my notes. The year she gave me sealing wax and a brass stamp with an “M” on it I couldn’t wait to get to the task so I could light the deep red wax like a candle and watch, mesmerized, as it dripped onto the back ...

For some, February 1 is a “Rabbit, Rabbit” thing. And February 2 is Groundhog Day. I’ve written before, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, that it is February, and not April, that is the cruelest month. Dates and anniversaries are important to me. Even when I neglect to send a card or outwardly acknowledge an occasion, I’m usually mindful, grateful, and thinking fondly of the people or events involved. My niece was born 17 years ago this weekend. February 1 there was a terrific ice storm in Kansas City. Lots of folks lost power — good thing the hospital didn’t! — and my brother and sister-in-law had friends without light and heat staying in their home while they were welcoming their first born in the hospital. That same day, one of my besties (we’re sort of Three Musketeers) was traveling by train to KC from western Kansas for a routine doctor’s appointment. The ice forced delays; her Kansas City hotel was without power; the other bestie and I brazenly inte...

Some of my friends can’t wait for the holidays. The rest can’t wait for them to be over. It’s no wonder we’re conflicted. We’ve allowed our most traditional, warm and fuzzy holiday to be smothered by an avalanche of consumerism and immediate gratification. Goodbye “over the river and through the woods.” This year, it’s over to Target to get the goods. Meanwhile, Squanto and Norman Rockwell are spinning in their graves and Thanksgiving is forced to stand as a bookend for a season of competitive retailing and manufactured desire. There’s plenty of cluck-clucking and tsk-tsking over stores that dare to be open Thanksgiving, but we have only ourselves to blame. And by “we” I mean this collective society in which we live... the same way that “we” are to blame for Congress: We put up with the insanity. Walmart and Macy’s know they can count on us to worship at their altars, that we will happily whip out our credit cards and partake in their communion of gr...