The great-grandmother I know the least about is my father’s maternal grandmother, Della Phillips Jones. All I ever knew about her growing up was that she had been married before she married my great-grandfather, and her daughter (my grandmother) had a half-sister from Della’s first marriage who was quite a […]
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Random Photos: Going Home Again . . . A Vacation Remembered
My husband and I didn’t take too many summer vacations at my parents’ home when our kids were growing up. We saved our visits for every third Christmas. In addition, my parents visited us once or twice a year in Kansas City, and we sent our kids out to Washington […]
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Different Forms of Grieving
I did not plan to write this week about losing my parents—that’s a subject I’ve covered many times in this blog (see here and here for examples). But this week is the third anniversary of my mother’s death, and the topic is on my mind. Three years sounds like a […]
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Sleepless in Kansas City
One of the disadvantages I’ve found in getting older is not sleeping as well as I did in my youth. Ever since childhood, I’ve had trouble sleeping during times of stress, but now I hardly ever sleep for eight hours straight. Most nights I wake up once, but some nights […]
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My Grandmother’s Jell-O
As a child, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother, my Nanny Winnie. My mother, brother, and I even lived with my grandparents for a few months when I was small. So I know Nanny Winnie cooked for me a lot. But I don’t remember any signature […]
Continue readingHair Salons
I’ve always been uncomfortable in hair salons—or “beauty parlors,” as we called them when I was a little girl. My first recollection of being in a beauty parlor was when I was still a toddler visiting my grandparents in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I don’t remember when it was—whether it was […]
Continue readingOn Heffalumps, Hookers, and Humor
Here’s a (sort of) Christmas story I’ve never posted before. I wrote it for a writers’ group holiday party a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it. On Heffalumps, Hookers, and Humor The winter when I was four, I wasn’t supposed to know how to read, but I did. […]
Continue readingThe Summer of ’64: Pacific Grove
I’ve mentioned spending summers with my grandparents in Pacific Grove, California. It seemed like I spent several idyllic summers there, but there really weren’t that many. Only twice did my brother and I spend long vacations with our grandparents. In 1963 we spent a month there, but our mother was […]
Continue readingLearning Flexibility at My Daughter’s Birthday Parties
I wrote an earlier post listing many of the things I included in my daughter’s baby book. One thing I didn’t mention in that post was that I wrote descriptions of how we celebrated each of her first eight birthdays. I reread those entries recently, looking for a hook for […]
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 […]
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