Conquering Fear Through Grandpa’s Glasses
When my daughter was in preschool, she was afraid of many things. Santa Claus, Disney movies, and fireworks were just a few of the things she dreaded. She ran screaming down the hall when Santa Claus showed up one Christmas Eve. She would not take his candy cane, nor pull his beard, nor even let […]
Water Sports, Card Games & Airplane Letters
As Memorial Day approaches, I remember long summer days of swimming and waterskiing until we were exhausted, followed by cutthroat card games in the afternoons and evenings. My family rented a cabin on Coeur d’Alene Lake in northern Idaho, beginning when I was thirteen or fourteen, until my parents bought land on the lake and […]
Reunions, Memories, Age, and Wonder
I recently received a notice about my fortieth high school reunion this fall. Fortieth!!! How can it be forty years since I graduated from high school? I still feel seventeen. Well, except when my back hurts. And my knees creak. I remember when I was fifteen and my parents went to their twentieth high school […]
Remembering: It’s What Mothers Do
My daughter chastises me for not documenting her childhood completely in her baby book. She claims I didn’t write as much about her as about her older brother. This week – the week of her birthday as well as of Mother’s Day – I’ve gone back and looked at her baby book. I didn’t do […]
Diversity in Families: A Mother’s Day Gift from My Son
On Mother’s Day, when he was eleven or twelve, my son gave me a pair of earrings – dangling strings of tiny freshwater pearls. I was surprised when I opened the little box he sheepishly handed me to find such a personal and beautiful gift. The earrings must be inexpensive, because he bought them with […]
Working Through the Generations: Happy 80th Birthday to My Father
I’ve written before that I am a lot like my mother. But I developed my attitudes toward work by watching my father. My earliest memories of my father at work date back to when I was in pre-school. When he was in graduate school earning his Ph.D. in metallurgy, he worked a variety of jobs […]
You Know Your Children Are Grown When . . . [Part II]
In an earlier post, I mentioned situations where I was confronted by the fact that my children are grown and independent. A family trip during this past Christmas season brought a few more such occasions to mind. You know your children are grown when . . . 1. They pick out thoughtful gifts for you […]
Family Read Aloud Month: Building a Community of Readers in Kansas City
As I wrote recently, reading has always been very important to me. I didn’t know when I wrote my post two weeks ago about my mother reading to me that November is Family Read Aloud Month, nor that the Kansas City Public Library is working with Mayor Sly James on an initiative called Turn the Page Kansas City, […]
Memories: In Song and Words
We don’t know what will suddenly bring a dormant memory to consciousness. For Proust, it was the taste of madeleines. For me, it was a hymn sung in church. “Whatsoever you do” was the song sung after communion at Mass a couple of weeks ago. “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers . […]