When my husband and I were in our third year of law school, we had to decide where to settle after we graduated. We’d spent the summer after our second year in Los Angeles, each clerking for a different law firm. Neither of us liked Los Angeles—we’d worked there primarily […]
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Leap Year: A Four-Year Assessment of Life
I haven’t written a post about leap year before. The opportunity only comes along once every four years, and I had barely started writing this blog in February 2012. I tend to use mile markers to assess my life over the longer term. For example, on a major birthday, I […]
Continue readingA Story I Couldn’t Tell Before: The Sister I Never Knew
Shortly before my mother’s death, my father and I reviewed the draft obituaries my parents had written for themselves several years earlier, long before my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At the time my father showed me the obituaries, my mother was about to go into hospice. We knew we […]
Continue readingThe Boy Wonder
When my son was about three, he went through a Batman phase that lasted several months to a year. He had Batman pajamas and underwear. He had a toy Batmobile, which is still in our basement. He ran around the house singing, “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Batman!” (Did I do that […]
Continue readingYou Say Grandma, I Say Nanny . . . Doesn’t Have the Same Ring As Potayto, Potahto
I’ve mentioned before that I called my maternal grandmother Nanny Winnie. How I came to call her that started on my father’s side of the family when my older cousin began calling our common grandmother Nanny Kay. I was the second of Nanny Kay’s grandchildren (though a third was born […]
Continue readingSiblings as Targets and as Friends
Both my mother and my father grew up in families consisting of two siblings—an older brother and younger sister. I’ve always wondered if that is part of why they were so compatible, although they each had an uneasy relationship with their sibling for much of their lives. I’ve written before […]
Continue readingMystery of the Old Doll Solved
When I was cleaning out my parents’ house last spring, I found an old doll. Its body was corduroy, it was stuffed with something soft, but had a hard plastic face. I remembered the doll from my childhood, but I didn’t know where it came from. Was it mine? Or […]
Continue readingA Christmas Stocking Tantrum
My Christmas preparations are about finished—the cards are mailed, the packages wrapped, and the house decorated. I still have some cooking to do, but it will get done. I don’t do a lot of decorating for holidays. When the children were small, I made token attempts for Valentine’s Day, Easter, […]
Continue readingThe Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t
Last Wednesday morning, I made pumpkin and pecan pies. Wednesday night, my husband made apple pie, and he cooked green beans Thursday morning. We were ready with our contributions to Thanksgiving dinner. Our two adult children had flown to Kansas City to be with us—our son on Monday and our […]
Continue readingStories I Couldn’t Tell Before: Driving Dad’s Oldsmobile
When I was in high school, my father had this huge Oldsmobile 98. It was a big four-door sedan, the biggest car Oldsmobile made. The V8 engine could tow a boat crammed full of boxes for a summer on the lake. The passenger compartment could transport our family of six, […]
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