• October 28, 2021

“Lady in the Waiting Room”

“Lady in the Waiting Room”  She was tiny. A frail, 5’ tall, older woman who entered the waiting room, looked around, and sat on one of the empty chairs. She never went up to check in with the receptionist behind the glass. Most of the chairs in the room were taken. Over the next hour, […]
  • October 26, 2021

Panic in the Tunnel: A Caretaker’s Journey

Panic in the Tunnel: A Caretaker’s Journey A caretaker’s life is littered with unexpected stressors that can bring her or him to the brink. Case in point? An event that happened on our recent trip to the western coast (we live in Rhode Island). Now, Seattle, Washington is a big town, indeed. Millions of residents…thousands […]
  • May 24, 2021

Diane Woods Blansett: One of the Caretaker Army

“I see Wayne occasionally glimpse through my soul and sometimes it breaks my heart” … Diane Woods Blansett Her Southern accent came clearly across the airwaves to me, just as certain as my Rhode Island “drop the r’s” did to her, I am sure, for Diane Woods Blansett is from Cleveland, Mississippi, a farming and semi-industrial community […]
  • August 10, 2017

A Lesson My Aging Mother Taught Me

  It had been brutally hot that summer. And throughout the state, towns and cities baked in the sun’s punishing rays. My mother’s half acre, bordering the West Warwick/Coventry line, was parched and arid but that didn’t stop her from hiring two sketchy-looking individuals to prune the forsythia bushes on her property. Why? She intended […]