Mary Novaria

As seen on  Photo Credit:  Ondřej Šálek  Flickr via  Compfight   cc “I want to die.”   It was hard to hear when my mother first said the words to me over the phone, but I understood why she felt that way. Besides robbing her of memory, that thief dementia had stolen my mom’s independence, dignity and ability to have an adult conversation. She repeated herself incessantly and often had trouble spitting out a coherent thought. “Oh, never mind,” she’d say when she couldn’t get the words out. I could tell she was confused, frightened and depressed at the turn her life had taken. I tried to imagine what it would be like to wake up in assisted living every morning and not remember where I was or why I was there. The thought terrified me. “I just want it to be over,” she said, in a rare moment of clarity.  She hadn’t been so definite about anything in five years or more. At first I didn’t know what to say, but a...

As featured in the Huffington Post My mother embraced all things Irish: shamrocks, soda bread and fishermen’s sweaters. She chose St. Patrick’s Day for my father’s funeral and, the night before, she mended the old green, white and orange flag so we could fly it at the house during a reception following the service. My mom could tell you the names of the villages in Cork, Kerry and Limerick where her grandparents were born, and I knew my dad’s people were from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. I’d always been told I was 100 percent Irish and I believed it every St. Patrick’s Day of my life — until now. I recently ran my DNA and the surprising results, which estimate I’m 94 percent Irish, indicate the percentage could even be as low as 81. Surprisingly, I have DNA from Finland/Northwest Russia, but I have a feeling those ancestors go so far back I’ll never find them. Click here for the rest of the story... 

                                                                                                                   Fotolia I get why teenagers want to go out on New Year's Eve, I really do. It's because they want to make us crazy. The reason I know this is because I was 17 once. There were few things worse than being home on New Year's Eve. It was worse than missing Prom, worse than not going to Florida for Spring Break, worse than flunking your driver's test. Dear old Dad always called New Year's Eve "amateur night"--a night fraught with beginning binge drinkers making asses of themselves, generally wreaking havoc, and possibly jeopardizing life and limb. Going out on this auspicious occasion w...

As seen on Huffington Post I once made an 8-year-old cry at a soccer match when I pointed at her and shouted, "Handball! You've gotta be kidding me!" Not my finest moment in years of youth sports that have taken our family to basketball courts, soccer fields, baseball diamonds and golf courses. With two athletic kids and a house in the suburbs, competition is a way of life. We rationalize about the benefits of developing skills, confidence and good sportsmanship, but how much of that is wiped out by over-involved parents who behave badly? Just like kindergartners, when it comes to sports, adults act out in many ways. Here are the 10 worst. Continue reading here... Follow me on Twitter. 

As seen in the Huffington Post. One of the most humbling things about my kids growing up is realizing that I still have growing up to do myself. I'm a reluctant empty nester. And while I'll always be my kids' mom, having the chicks out of the roost and on their own means I've had to adjust the way I parent. Contrary to the hardwired inclinations that tempt me to coddle and meddle, I'm learning to stay out of their way and let them live their lives as the adults they've become. It's not easy. Sometimes I want to have a tantrum. I swear yesterday I was driving the middle school carpool, but suddenly, somehow, both of my children are in their 20s. They also live 2,000 and 1,600 miles away, which, while gut wrenching at times, just might make it easier for me to live and let live and more difficult for me to become a stalker. This way, I can't drive by to see if their cars are in the driveway, show up with a healthy lunch at their workplace or intro...

This piece first appeared in the Huffington Post.  This is my fifteenth Father's Day without my dad. He died of heart failure four days before St. Patrick's Day, a couple of months shy of his 79th birthday, and after a year of hospice care. He took his last breath quite peacefully while I sat by his bedside with my mother and Seamus, my parents' big, fluffy, orange and white cat. I was stunned by how clear it was that my father's spirit had left his body. Only his earthly container remained. A shell of him lay still and quiet and cool on the bed ... but he was gone. And so was a family history I'd neglected to plumb.  Some people seem to be supernaturally connected to loved ones who've gone on to the great beyond. Not so for me. Oh, I can imagine what my father might say or think about something, what movies he'd like to see, or what books he'd be reading if he were still here. And I've wondered how much he might know about our earthly lives h...

Ex-con, kitchen and craft maven Martha Stewart’s daughter, Alexis, has written a revealing book about growing up with her mommy dearest. Stewart says the book is all in fun, one big joke. Maybe. I’m sure Alexis will laugh all the way to the bank. Remember what Frank McCourt said at the beginning of Angela’s Ashes? “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” Authors have been telling tales about their upbringings since the dawn of the age. Readers love to get a glimpse inside the misery of others, especially if those others are celebs. But what about us regular folks? How much is okay to tell? I wrestle with this in my own writing because our stories are rarely only our stories. They almost always involve other people. I don’t want to...

I get why teenagers want to go out on New Year's Eve, I really do. It's because they want to make us crazy. The reason I know this is because I was 17 once. There were few things worse than being home on New Year's Eve. It was worse than missing Prom, worse than not going to Florida for Spring Break, worse than flunking your driver's test. Dear old Dad always called New Year's Eve "amateur night"--a night fraught with beginning binge drinkers making asses of themselves, generally wreaking havoc, and possibly jeopardizing life and limb. Going out on this auspicious occasion was seriously frowned upon. (The same was true for the purchase and use of roman candles, smoke bombs and bottle rockets on the Fourth of July.) Participating in year-end revelry was even more strenuously discouraged if it involved driving. Ask to borrow Dad's car on December 31st? Fuhgedaboudit! I have no memory of my parents ever going to a fancy, grown-up New Year's Eve ...