March is National Reading Awareness Month. I’ve written before about how important reading has been in our family, but my earlier post (here) focused on how my mother read to me when I was a child. My husband and I also read to our kids when they were small. We read […]
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Out of the Closet
Here is the post I had planned for January 7. I think I’m ready for it now: One of the things I love most about my house is the huge closet in the master bedroom. It is about ten feet by fourteen feet and lined with rods on the sides […]
Continue readingTrue Christmas Story: A Visit from St. Nicholas
In some families, Santa Claus comes to call ahead of Christmas Eve every year. Other families take their children to see St. Nicholas at the mall every year. I only remember one time Santa came to see my brother and me, and one later visit to the mall to see […]
Continue readingHand-Me-Downs: The Little Blue Coat
As the oldest child, I didn’t have to wear many hand-me-downs. Occasionally, I wore clothes from the daughter of my mother’s friend. When I reached junior high, I sometimes had to wear something of my mother’s. I hated that, because styles meant for a thirty-something woman in the late 1960s […]
Continue readingA Broken Foot, Horseback Riding, and Christmas Woes . . . And Joys
Most years about this time I get frantic over Christmas preparations. This year is particularly bad, because I have a trip planned for a week in early December, so I am trying to get as much done as possible before I leave. But I’m not having much success. When I […]
Continue readingThe Cousins and Rudolph
I wrote on Monday about my children and their cousins. The picture above is my favorite picture of the four of them, primarily because I know the story behind it. They were singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to the adults that were present. The youngest, my daughter, was nineteen months […]
Continue readingFriends: 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 […]
Continue readingYou 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 […]
Continue readingHalloween Costumes: Making Good and Making Do
My husband and I have been invited to a Halloween party requiring costumes, and we are panicked. What will we wear? I’ve seldom put a lot of effort into Halloween. As I’ve written before, I am the pumpkin carver in the family, and we usually have a jack o’lantern for […]
Continue readingFamily Resemblances: The Dutch Boy Look
One of the pictures I found when I made the slide show of my mother’s life for her funeral was this photograph of her as a small child on a pony. I don’t recognize the building behind her, so I don’t know where the picture was taken. I have no […]
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