Over time, Ms. Purvis, the speech-language pathologist, incrementally ramped up the exercises: arrange numbers in descending order, repeat a sentence in reverse. She increased noise and distraction to approximate Ms. Lewis’s busy work environment. She kept the door open, turned on television news and eventually held sessions in the bustling physical therapy gym. Amid the…
Maybe it’s a symptom of having read too many 19th-century British novels, but, to me, a steaming bowl of porridge, speckled with nuggets of melting butter and crunchy flakes of salt, is possibly the most comforting meal I could curl up with on a blustery, gray evening. It should be sustaining enough for any heroine…
Samantha Fleischman and Allison Saltstein overlapped for three years at Muhlenberg College, a tiny liberal arts school in Allentown, Pa. But they didn’t meet until Ms. Saltstein was a second-semester senior, in January 2010, and the two took the same video production class. “Time almost ran out on us,” said Ms. Saltstein, 34, who graduated…
“I am a woman in my 50s, so I am well aware that your life does not end whether you find a guy or a girl or not, whether you have kids or not, right?” Davis said. “We can testify to the fact that it’s not over, and it’s not boring. So I was never…
While attending grad school in New York City, Shoshana Akabas tutored a recently arrived Afghan refugee in English. The woman was pregnant and had a very small support system in the U.S., so Akabas asked a friend of hers who had recently given birth whether she had baby clothes to pass along. Akabas’ friend had…
Historically, African-American neighborhoods were tucked away from the waterfront, so if you want to look for traces of the Downings’ life on Chincoteague, you might go farther inland to higher ground where the Union Baptist and Christ United Methodist churches are. A local podcast series called The Bivalve Trail further describes Thomas Downing’s story on…
“My decision to propose when I did was purely organic,” Mr. Moss said. But it was not spontaneous, because he had prepared a sign for the occasion, which he stationed in his parents’ backyard. It read, “Molly, will you marry me?” On Nov. 14, the couple were wed in Memphis, where they live, at Baron…
The incipient relationship of Andrew Shoulders and Charles Reese II might have reached an unfortunate end on just their second date had it not been for Mr. Reese’s well-developed listening skills. “He really pays attention to what people say,” Mr. Shoulders, 40, said. For their first date, in November 2010, the men met at a…
Zack Lewis and his date, also named Zack, had yet to disclose their surnames when they met at a gay bar in Manhattan’s East Village in September 2015, after first connecting on the dating app Grindr. But when Mr. Lewis had occasion to glance at the other Zack’s Visa card, he knew something momentous was…
“Sara, who would you say has been the love of your life?” “Why,” she said with a slight drawl, “I guess I would have to say my cat, Bo.” She scrunched up her eyes, this time to stifle a laugh. I wanted to say, “Try me!” But I didn’t dare. Inwardly, I churned. Outwardly, I…