by Ann Beach | Jan 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
I carefully opened the worn, thin cardboard box, lifting the clumps of excelsior out, to reveal the crumpled tissue paper. I gently unwrapped the tiny porcelain figures lovingly nestled in the tissue, arranging them just so. Mary, Joseph, the baby, the angel, the...
by Ann Beach | Jan 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
It was late one fall afternoon, and I was frustrated, disgusted and ready to throw my shotgun down. My sporting clays lesson had gone poorly, and I felt like I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Cody, my instructor, stood patiently behind me while I took a deep...
by Ann Beach | Dec 22, 2023 | Medicine
In December, the questions parents ask in the hospital are different. Instead of “Will my child be OK?”, we pediatric hospitalists hear: “We have plane tickets to go skiing for Christmas. Will he be well by then?” “She’ll be home for Christmas, right? We’ve never been...
by Ann Beach | Nov 3, 2023 | Uncategorized
It is Halloween 1959, or thereabouts. The neighborhood of tidy red brick houses under the tall pine trees is like many that were quickly thrown up after WWII when the GIs came home, got married, and started families. We, my older brother Bob, and I, have already raked...
by Ann Beach | Sep 21, 2023 | Medicine
We love to stay at historic places when we travel, and so I booked a few nights at Birch Lodge during our recent vacation to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. All I knew was that it was over 100 years old, on the National Registry of Historic Places, and looked beautiful...
