April 10 is National Siblings Day. Although I have written many posts about siblings—my siblings, my mother and her brother, my father and his sister, and my own children as siblings—I have never posted specifically about National Siblings Day. National Siblings Day is a day to celebrate one’s siblings. It […]
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Home Alone for Christmas
My husband and I spent Christmas by ourselves this year. Most of our 46 Christmases together have been whirlwinds of activity, usually with travel to one set of our parents or the other. In more recent years, one or both of our adult children have usually come to visit. But […]
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“Where’s That Baby?” Redux
Soon I will get to meet my new granddaughter. I have anticipated this moment for months. I can’t wait to get her into my arms. And yet, I also remember how it felt to have my own new baby—it seemed everyone wanted the baby, and no one wanted me anymore. […]
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The Pause Between Years
I usually post about Oregon history during the last week of the month, but this week I am feeling the pause between years. The week between Christmas and New Year’s has always felt to me like time to heave a big sigh and relax, to sit in the moment suspended […]
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Not So Random Photos: An August Trip Down Memory Lane
I’ve written many times about Pacific Grove and Carmel, California, and other venues on the Monterey Peninsula. But for decades I didn’t visit that idyllic place in my past. My grandmother moved away from Pacific Grove in the summer of 1967. My husband and I went there once or twice […]
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Birthdays Old and New
I’m not good at remembering summer birthdays. Maybe it’s because there’s too much else to do. Maybe it’s because summer was never birthday season in my family. Growing up, my family’s birthdays were either in the spring or the autumn. We had birthdays in March, April, and September. The last […]
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The Family That Waterskis Together . . .
I’ve written before about the idyllic summers I spent as a teenager on Coeur d’Alene Lake. And I’ve written about waterskiing. I recently found some old pictures of those days—pictures of my father, mother, brother, and me all waterskiing. As I looked at these pictures, I remembered how each of […]
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On Birthdays, Goals, and Priorities
My birthday was yesterday. I celebrated sedately, ordering dinner from an Italian restaurant my husband and I like and cake from a bakery I hadn’t tried before. I also voted in a municipal election and met with a banker. It was a decent day, though I doubt this becomes one […]
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My Journaling, Then and Now
Twenty years ago today, March 16, 2002, I opened up a lined blank journal and began writing. I’ve posted before about my first words in that journal (“The only way to start is just to start—take the plunge”). I still recall the trepidation I felt as I faced that blank […]
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A Book My Mother Gave Me: The Thorn Birds
My mother’s birthday would have been later this week, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about her. One of the things I think about is all the books we read and discussed. Both of us loved reading all our lives, from the time we first could read until, in […]
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