Mary Novaria

As seen in the Huffington Post.   I was careless with my skin as a teen and now I’m terrified of getting skin cancer like my father. Even though my fair, Irish skin would freckle and burn it didn’t stop me from trying to achieve that golden glow featured in glossy magazine ads for Hawaiian Tropic and Bain de Soleil. I envied my girlfriends who tanned so easily and were burnished and brown after just one afternoon at the pool or the tennis court. My mom brought what we used to call “suntan lotion” on family vacations. The smell of Coppertone still takes me back to Hampton Beach on the New England shore. In fact, those Coppertone billboards with a little dog pulling down a blond, pigtailed girl’s swimsuit bottoms were a staple of my childhood. Still, my mother was nowhere near the sunscreen police that I became with my kids. They’re fair like me—a blonde and a redhead—and I slathered them with SPF 50 practically from the moment they were born. I knew my vigilan...

Get the Picture? A Father's Legacy and the Love of Art BY MARY NOVARIA June 17, 2016 Published by The Good Men Project My dad was a first generation Irish-American who grew up playing stickball on the streets of New York. His father, a laborer from County Tyrone, had an 8 th  grade education, never took his family to a museum, and didn’t play classical music in the home. The radio, which was considered a luxury, was for listening to “Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy” and the New York Giants baseball games. My father was in his 30s before going to the top of the Empire State building—he took out-of-town guests—and was well into adulthood before he was exposed to the treasures that lay behind the doors of MoMA or The Met. Click here to continue reading... I'm Not Sally Draper But I Could've Been BY MARY NOVARIA March 27, 2015    Published by the Huffington Post             ...