Nancy Slonim Aronie
On Saturdays when I was nine my mother would get home at five, exhausted and hungry from her job as receptionist at Schultzes Beauty Salon. My job was to have a snack ready for her for our Brookside Boulevard (the ritzy street) ritual.
I went to the senior center in Vineyard Haven last Wednesday morning for my very first time. In fact it was my first visit to any senior center. I don’t like those euphemisms — senior, golden oldie, retiree.
Recently my husband and I were guests at a small dinner party at a friend’s house. We were meeting the other six people for the first time. One of the women is a documentary filmmaker, one of the guys is a retired CEO of a major company.
When my mother was in her 60s she started wearing scarves. She didn’t buy many clothes and never really got into shoes, but the woman had a scarf for every occasion. I never saw her go out in public without one. One day I said, Mom what’s with the scarves? She said, oh I hate my neck.
Water is an essential ingredient for the existence of life as we know it. Water is the only substance naturally present on the earth that exists in three distinct states — solid, liquid and gas.
In the water molecule, oxygen is the central atom. It has four pairs of valence electrons surrounding it.
There was a time when if someone said you don’t look Jewish, I took it as a compliment. It was the 1950s and our parents spent every ounce of their energy working to assimilate, to get a teeny corner of the American dream.