Lately I feel like my brain is on holiday. I find myself wandering the supermarket unable to remember exactly what I'm supposed to be shopping for, reaching the end ...

Paulist Father Dave Dwyer, CSP will be the host and on-air commentator for this year's Midnight Mass from St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Dwyer, who is the ...

Sometimes my parish priest starts mass by asking us to look around and introduce ourselves to one or two people we don't know. The exchanges that follow are ...

I am standing at my kitchen sink, gazing out the window as the afternoon sun dissolves into the sky. I am supposed to be peeling potatoes for supper ...

Did you see that kid in the Wal-Mart a while back, the two-year-old flailing about red-faced and sobbing in the shopping buggy? He might have belonged to ...

I've never really been one for shopping, but after I learned I was pregnant with my first child, I started looking forward to all the impending trips to the malls and department ...

I'm relieved July 1 falls on a Tuesday this year, unattached to a weekend. It means, yay, that I won't have to mark the Canada Day holiday by accompanying my husband on a three-night excursion ...

My two-year-old presses his ear to the bulge that is my belly. "She's not big enough yet," he informs me, his diagnosis delivered with tiny confidence. "What will happen when she's big enough?" I ...

One weekend afternoon when I was a kid, the 1958 film The Blob came on TV. Maybe my mother shouldn't have let me watch it. That scene where the terrified crush of young ...

My father is never satisfied with the trees my mother hauls home from the gas station Christmas tree lot. Every year he produces the garden shears and goes about pruning. No one bothers trying to ...

Oatmeal is not a favorite food of two-year-olds. Mine wasn't too thrilled to see it arrive on the breakfast table this morning. He ate grudgingly, intermittent spoonfuls hitting the table and floor. I cajoled it ...

Are we allowed to say "housewife" anymore? I doubt it's ever been a flattering word — brings to mind frumpy ladies in hair curlers with ambitions no grander than getting good deals on rump roasts ...

No one comes running to meet me when I get home from work. The house is disappointingly dark and silent, the loves of my life hours into sleep. Since there's no one around to talk ...

Saint Francis of Assisi is up for bid on eBay . Several of him, actually. There's Saint Francis in terra cotta or hand-painted ceramic, and also a lovely and practical Saint ...

I once had a roommate who disapproved of me watching the X-Files. You know, because of all the murdering, and that creepy music. She would glide past the TV Sunday nights gently tsk-tsking, and recite ...

A few weeks before she finished her pharmacy degree, my younger sister called to tell me she'd just been offered a job paying something like $60,000 a year. My mind sprouted dark, envious thoughts as ...

Their faces keep surfacing on the evening news, in snapshots pulled from fireplace mantels or the pages of the family album. These are photos never meant to be here, at the tragic center of a ...