Gail Elizabeth Sullivan

In my last post, I mentioned that I developed some friends during my second grade year, the first school year I spent at Christ the King School in Richland, Washington. One of those friends was Gail Elizabeth Sullivan. Gail was a bubbly little girl. She was smart (in the A […]

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Second Grade Anonymity

  Throughout my first-grade year, I felt exposed. As I’ve written, I was a superstar during my three weeks of kindergarten and in the first first-grade classroom I attended, because I could read and the other pupils couldn’t. Even after we moved and I came into a new first-grade class […]

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Milestones: On Turning Sixty

We have a tendency to mark milestone birthdays more than others. In my last post I described my twenty-first birthday. I don’t remember my thirtieth birthday—I was too busy with work and child-rearing for the day to make much of an impression. In fact, I remember being bothered more when […]

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My Mother’s Last Doll

I’ve written before about my first doll. I’ve written about my mother’s Storybook Bride doll that I could never play with. And I’ve written about the sewing doll that my grandmother and I made clothes for. This post is about my mother’s last doll. It wasn’t really a doll. It […]

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A Life-Long Friendship Now Forgotten

I’ve posted pictures of my mother as a child (see here and here) and others of her as a young woman before I knew her (see here and here). Some stories behind the pictures I know. And others I wish I knew. Mostly, I wish I’d known my mother better. […]

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Friends: Sometimes Mothers Know Best

When I arrived at Middlebury College, I knew no one. The college did a reasonably good job of throwing freshmen together on a variety of activities, but friendships must develop at their own pace and in their own time. The day we moved into the dorm, I was wearing a […]

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A Summer Short: On the Value of Blogging

There are times when I wonder why I keep posting on this blog. Some months I’m pleased with the readership, and I watch the statistics climb day after day. Other months, the numbers plummet, and I wonder if I’m so boring no one will ever read what I write again. […]

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