Waiting Room

What happens to a soccer mom when her little boy grows up to be a soccer player? Or baseball player or football player?Does she hang up her carpool keys and spin the satellite dish, hoping to catch a glimpse of her baby as he flashes a smile and a "Hi, Mom!" at a sideline camera?No way. The modern mother of the professional athlete doesn't sit at home waiting for her son to pay her tribute in a Sports Illustrated profile. The modern mother of the professional athlete gets organized."When Jonathan was drafted," says Cassandra Sneed Ogden, whose son was a first-round pick by the Baltimore Ravens football team in 1996, "I didn't understand why there wasn't an organization out there to provide me with support as the parent of a young man making the transition into professional football."

Someone called to testify Wednesday before the grand jury looking into the Ehrlich campaign's deceptive Election Day robocalls tells me Towson attorney Robert B. Green was in the waiting room, offering to consult with any witnesses connected to the campaign. I phoned Green, and his partner, David B. Irwin , took the call. “My firm represents the Bob Ehrlich for Maryland Committee, that's what I can tell you,” said Irwin, a former federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense lawyer.

Here they are, the greatest generation, looking pretty ordinary: armed now with carts and canes, bragging about their grandchildren, complaining about their doctors and relishing their deserts. Every other Monday night I visit my father at the Annapolis retirement community where he lives, and I have come to know the dinner menu as well as a bit about his friends from the World War II generation. At 90 my father doesn't say so much, but he and his dinner companions like the company of younger people (at 53, I count as younger)

Another year, another Valentine's Day, and still no sign of Mr. Right on the horizon.Or even Mr. Half-Right.It's odd, but Valentine's Day is beginning to affect me in the same way as New Year's Day. Which is to say: I find myself looking over the past year and assessing my life. In this case, my love life.Right now, for instance, I'm trying to remember two things: The name of every man I've ever loved and the name of every man I ever thought I loved.The first list is short. You could count the names on two fingers of your hand.

African-American women in Baltimore and five other U.S. cities are becoming infected with HIV at a rate five times the national average for black women, and closer to the rates of some African countries, according to a new study. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and around the country who made the findings suspected the rates were higher in these "hot spots" that have battled the epidemic for decades, but the numbers still came as a surprise in a field that tends to focus more on black and gay men. "This is why it's important to remind people that this is going on right here in our hometown," said Dr. Charles Flexner, the principal investigator for the Baltimore part of the study and a clinical pharmacologist and infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins.

Princess Diana's face stares up at me from the People magazine on the table in the waiting room. Jackie Onassis and other Kennedy women are on another cover. I'm sure they never had to wait an hour to be seen by their obstetricians. But I'm not a princess or a first lady, soI wait, bored because I already read those magazines weeks ago whilewaiting in line at the grocery store.But here I am waiting again, wondering why the doctor can't just please see me so I can get backto work before my boss notices I'm gone.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Steve Young doesn't mean to sound like a broken record, but, after all, he's heard the questions before."I hope I get in the game every week," Young, the San Francisco 49ers' backup quarterback, said yesterday. "I'd love to be playing."Young, 29, has been patiently responding to reporters' queries about his amount of playing time for more than three years, his tenure as backup to the seemingly unstoppable Joe Montana.This season has been worse than usual for Young. Montana, 34, is off to what may be his best start.

Spring is a heavy season for physical therapists. Walk into any physical therapy facility at any time of day, and you'll see evidence of it.In the morning there's the retiree getting friction massage on his tennis arm for the tendinitis that flared up after a recent match. In the afternoon, you'll see the high school lacrosse player soaking his sprained ankle in an ice bath. Late in the day, the sedentary office worker will arrive for heat treatments after wrenching her back turning over the garden on the first sunny weekend of the season.

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."-- Joshua 1:9The morning of Saturday, April 26, 1997, was sunny and crisp, spring day so perfect it took your breath away. It was a little after 8: 30 when Jeff Lauer nosed his 1988 Ford Taurus down the winding, two-lane ribbon of road that is Jarrettsville Pike just south of Jacksonville in northern Baltimore County.In the passenger seat, his wife, Jennifer, had just finished eating a chocolate-covered doughnut when she saw the small, dark car speeding toward them.

Baltimore County is feeling its age -- and the impact of its aged.The county, which grew rapidly in the postwar urban flight, has Maryland's largest population of seniors -- a distinction that has led some to dub it "God's waiting room."And the trend will only accelerate.Although the number of seniors and school-age children is roughly equal now, by 2020, seniors will outnumber children by 204,000 to 115,000.Such changes have made the county a model of sorts for the nation's elderly-care industry.