When I was a very young, my father made a bookcase. It’s made of a pretty wood (maybe oak?), and it is solid. It has a curved lip on the front facing at the top of the bookcase. I thought that made it a fancy piece of furniture when I […]
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On Birthdays and Owls: Remembering My Mother
Today would have been my mother’s 82nd birthday. One of my most popular posts on this blog is the one I wrote to mark her 80th birthday. By that time, she was in assisted living because of her Alzheimer’s, and she could not really celebrate her birthday that year. Last […]
Continue readingMy Grandfather’s Clock
When I was in second grade or so, my class sang the old song, “My Grandfather’s Clock,” by Henry Clay Work. The lyrics to the first verse are My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf, So it stood ninety years on the floor; It was taller by half […]
Continue readingMy Grandmother’s Pearls and the Nature of Memory
My father’s mother gave me a pearl necklace many years ago. I think the occasion was my high school graduation, but it could have been for my sixteenth birthday or some other milestone in my teens. It was the first “old” piece of jewelry I received. In fact, I thought […]
Continue readingMy Mother the Librarian . . . And How Libraries Have Changed!
February is Library Lovers Month. I come from a family of library lovers, and I am one myself. When I was a child, we could only check out six books from the library at a time. My mother took my siblings and me to the library almost every week during […]
Continue readingA Lesson About Wonder from Myself at Seventeen
I was a valedictorian in my high school class. There were six of us with 4.0 averages (no extra points in that era for A+s or Honors or AP classes). Because there were so many of us, we were each given three minutes to speak at our graduation ceremony. We […]
Continue readingA Fireplace and a Chair Across Two Generations
Please forgive me for posting another Christmas snapshot, even though we are now in a new year. This is a photograph of my mother and her older brother from 1937. It’s a happier picture than another one I posted of these two siblings, and it brought back many memories for […]
Continue readingTrue Christmas Story: A Visit from St. Nicholas
In some families, Santa Claus comes to call ahead of Christmas Eve every year. Other families take their children to see St. Nicholas at the mall every year. I only remember one time Santa came to see my brother and me, and one later visit to the mall to see […]
Continue readingHand-Me-Downs: The Little Blue Coat
As the oldest child, I didn’t have to wear many hand-me-downs. Occasionally, I wore clothes from the daughter of my mother’s friend. When I reached junior high, I sometimes had to wear something of my mother’s. I hated that, because styles meant for a thirty-something woman in the late 1960s […]
Continue readingA Broken Foot, Horseback Riding, and Christmas Woes . . . And Joys
Most years about this time I get frantic over Christmas preparations. This year is particularly bad, because I have a trip planned for a week in early December, so I am trying to get as much done as possible before I leave. But I’m not having much success. When I […]
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