I envied my children as they were growing up—they were close with two of their cousins. They were close in age, and for their first few years of life they lived within a reasonable driving distance of their mutual grandparents. The four kids played together regularly, stair steps spanning six […]
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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 […]
Continue readingOn Baking Cakes: Generations of Life Lessons
My mother’s death brought to mind many memories for all her family members. My son sent my father a letter describing one of his memories–a time when my mother instructed him in how to bake a cake. He was a Cub Scout at the time, and the pack was holding […]
Continue readingTravels to Europe As Book Ends of a Career
In August 1979, shortly after the bar exam, my husband and I traveled to London for two weeks. It was our delayed honeymoon, almost two years after we were married, and celebrated the end of law school and the beginning of our working careers. We knew that it would be […]
Continue readingBefore the Good Ones Are Taken
I mentioned last week that I left home for college about the time my sister turned nine. She soon found out that she missed me more than she thought she would. Shortly after I arrived at Middlebury College, my sister wrote me a letter. I don’t have the letter any […]
Continue readingHappy 50th Birthday To My Sister!
My brother and children seem to think they get treated unfairly in this blog, so this time it’s my sister’s turn. She turns fifty this week, so she is fair game. My sister was born when I was eight and a half. Too much younger to be a friend when […]
Continue readingMemories 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 […]
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 […]
Continue readingBack to School Across Two Generations
In recent weeks I’ve been following all my Facebook friends’ pictures of their children headed back to school—from the kindergarteners to the college-bound. I’m glad those days are behind me, though I have good memories both of my own back-to-school days and my children’s. When I was young, school never […]
Continue readingParenting 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, […]
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