I don’t remember too much about Independence Day celebrations when I was a kid. I’ve written about the flags someone gave my brother and me when I was about seven, and the trauma that our misuse of those flags caused me. That year, the Fourth of July was more problem […]
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Memories of Vicks
One scent that brings my childhood to mind is that of Vicks VapoRub. When I was of toddler and preschool age, my mother would bring out the Vicks every time my brother or I had a cold. I used to try to hide my symptoms so she wouldn’t treat me […]
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My Husband’s Second Christmas, and a Reflection on Memory
One of the “treasures” I found last year when I was cleaning out a cupboard was this picture of my husband as a toddler. The photograph was taken at Christmas 1950, when he was about fourteen months old. At that time, he was the only grandchild on both sides of […]
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Battle of the Sexes, circa 1963
I first became aware of gender differences when I was about six or seven. I had a brother just seventeen months younger than me (he turns 61 in just a few days), so I knew about the physical differences between boys and girls. But in terms of sexism and role-playing, […]
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The Fiasco That Began Third Grade
On Tuesday, September 3, 1963, fifty-five years ago today, I started third grade. The first days of school years are often memorable for one reason or another, and the morning of that day sticks in my mind. It was a day in which an ordinary event made a difference in […]
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A Story I’ve Rarely Told Before: My First Bad Haircut
I’ve written before about my dislike of beauty parlors, which dates back to early childhood. I have never been comfortable in salons, even though most of the time the stylists gave me better haircuts than when my mother cut my hair at home. However, a couple of weeks ago I […]
Continue readingMERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!
I wrote two years ago about going to see Santa Claus at Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon. I’m pretty sure the year was 1961. When I wrote that post, I couldn’t find the picture of my brother and me with Santa. Well, now I’ve found it: I hope Santa brought […]
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A Halloween Story I’ve Never Told Before: Alone with the Wind
Every year on Halloween night, I remember Halloween night in 1963, when I was seven years old. Our family had just moved into a newly constructed house in a new neighborhood about a month earlier. I had my own bedroom for the first time in my life. My room was […]
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The Afghan My Grandmother Made Me
The other evening my husband pulled an old throw out of the closet and settled in for a nap. We haven’t used this afghan in years—it’s a bright variegated blue and white random knit, and although we have a lot of blue in our home, this blanket doesn’t really fit […]
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Summer Freedom from Generation to Generation
Now that we are well into June, most schools across the nation are out, and kids everywhere are enjoying their summer vacations. Or are they? It seems to me that children don’t have as much summer freedom as past generations had. They may have the world at their fingertips through […]
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