On Birthdays and Owls: Remembering My Mother
Today would have been my mother’s 82nd birthday. One of my most popular posts on this blog is the one I wrote to mark her 80th birthday. By that time, she was in assisted living because of her Alzheimer’s, and she could not really celebrate her birthday that year. Last year—her 81st birthday—was even worse. […]
My Grandfather’s Clock
When I was in second grade or so, my class sang the old song, “My Grandfather’s Clock,” by Henry Clay Work. The lyrics to the first verse are My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf, So it stood ninety years on the floor; It was taller by half than the old man himself, […]
Genealogies Found: Some Family Myths Verified, Others Not
One of the things I found in going through my father’s papers was some genealogies on various branches of our family. Readers will be hearing some of these stories in months ahead. This first installment relates to Charles N. Claudson, our ancestor who emigrated from Denmark. I wrote previously about Charles, who was born in […]
A Lesson About Wonder from Myself at Seventeen
I was a valedictorian in my high school class. There were six of us with 4.0 averages (no extra points in that era for A+s or Honors or AP classes). Because there were so many of us, we were each given three minutes to speak at our graduation ceremony. We each chose one emotion to […]
Stories: Past, Present, and Future
A week ago when I posted, my father was alive. He was a regular reader of my blog, and often called or emailed me when I posted about family issues. He didn’t call me to comment on last Monday’s post about my grandparents’ house. But he did email me on Monday about one of his […]
Change in Plans—In This Blog as in Life
I had a humorous post lined up for today, but I learned Monday night that my father had passed away suddenly. You may remember that my mother died on July 4. He had missed her terribly for the last six months. He told me after Christmas that it was the first Christmas in sixty-six years […]
Judgment in Families and Beyond
It apparently caused quite a stir in my parents’ high school when Catholic Mary began dating Protestant Tommy. Not only was he a Protestant, but he was a member of DeMolay, the Masonic organization for young men. Yet Mary wore his DeMolay pin proudly. Although my mother was a devout Catholic all her life, she […]
You Do Have My Nose!
In every family, there are traits and physical features that no one wants to own. For example, I have my father’s ears. So does my sister. So does my daughter, who calls them “the Claudson ears.” Our ears all stick out at the top. I suppose we should be glad that most of us are […]
Memories of Friends and Mothers
When I visited my father in August, I decided to make a peach cobbler and needed a recipe. I should have just turned to this blog, where I have posted a very good recipe for peach cobbler. But I went to my mother’s old cookbooks instead, because my father didn’t have any Bisquick, and my […]
Parenting the Parents: On Being a Sounding Board
August 1979, thirty-five years ago this month, was the first time I felt I was more of an adult than my parents. After my husband and I graduated from law school and took the bar exam, he had to go on his two weeks’ annual training with the Naval Reserves, and I went to visit […]