A Pox on Chickenpox (Part 2)

I wrote recently about my son’s bout with chickenpox in January 1986. Well, as I feared, a couple of weeks after he recovered, his little sister broke out in spots. She was not quite nine months old at the time—just a baby. But a baby with a forceful personality. As […]

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My Parents’ Engagement Party

My parents were married in June 1955, after about seven years of dating—they’d met as high school freshmen and begun dating when they were sophomores. Their relationship survived the remainder of high school and four years at different colleges. Sixty-two years ago this month, in December 1954, during Christmas break […]

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My Earliest Thanksgiving Memories

I’ve written before (see here and here) about how glad I am that my children spent so much time with their cousins growing up, because I didn’t have that experience as a kid. But I do remember one Thanksgiving my family spent with my cousins. It’s the earliest Thanksgiving I remember—1958, […]

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The 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 […]

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Pool Days . . . Guilt-Free

My in-laws put a swimming pool in their back yard the summer after my first child was born. I’m not a good swimmer, but I love hanging out by pools, at least until my fair skin starts to burn. It was wonderful to have a place to go to relax […]

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