I thumbed through a photo album of my son’s baby pictures, trying to think of something to write as a birthday post for him. His birthday is later this week. In the album, I found two photographs taken by a photographer at Hallmark Cards when my son was almost a […]
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Mrs. Birdsong’s Bell Pull
My husband and I are starting to think about what to hang on the walls in our new house. Before we moved, our daughter told me, “Mother, if you don’t hang your pictures within a week after you move, you’ll never do it.” I disagreed with her then, and I […]
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On Shells and Rocks
I’ve always been fascinated by seashells. I think it goes along with my love of beaches. When I visit beaches, I spend half my time staring at the sand looking for shells. After most coastal vacations I bring back a small baggie containing a few shells. Often they are imperfect, […]
Continue readingFifty Years Ago: My 8th Grade Graduation
I wrote recently about my daughter’s 8th-grade graduation in 1999. After I wrote that post, I realized my own 8th-grade graduation was thirty years earlier—in late May or early June 1969. That’s fifty years ago—hard to believe it is half a century in the past. No lightning struck our house […]
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No March Madness Anymore
I was perhaps programmed from early childhood to work for Hallmark Cards, which I did for 27 years. When I was growing up, my mother made a big deal of celebrating birthdays. She sent cards on every holiday and on innumerable birthdays of relatives and friends. She mailed several greeting […]
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A Possible Family Heirloom: The Advent Calendar My Mother Made
On that trip that my mother made to our home in late November or early December 1984, she brought my son a gift she had made herself—an Advent calendar in the shape of a wreath. For those who don’t know, an Advent calendar helps children count the days until Christmas […]
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The Great-Grandmother I Know the Most About: Cecelia Ryan Strachan
I never knew my great-grandmother Cecelia Ryan Strachan, my maternal grandmother’s mother. In fact, Cecelia died before my mother was born, so my mother never knew this grandmother either. But I can piece together some facts about Cecelia’s life, from family stories and from Sacramento newspaper articles and histories. That’s […]
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Happy 90th Birthday To My Mother-in-Law
Even before I met my mother-in-law-to-be, I wrote her. It was shortly before Mother’s Day in 1977. I’d been dating her son for a couple of months. When I bought the Mother’s Day cards for my mother and grandmothers in early May, I picked up a “To Someone Special” Mother’s […]
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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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Jade Earrings and Other Bequests
My husband’s maternal grandmother put tags and notes on many of her possessions, stating who she wanted to get what after her death. Most of her notes bequeathed her property to her daughters or to her four grandchildren, but there were a few things that had my name on them. […]
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