No, my dad isn’t Robert DeNiro, but we did have our own version of “Meet the Parents” just before my husband and I were married. As I’ve mentioned before (see here and here), my husband and I are about to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. We got married on the […]
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Haunting Book: Turn of Mind, by Alice LaPlante
The last book in my October series of haunting books is Turn of Mind, by Alice LaPlante. I would not have known about this book, except that it was a Stanford Alumni Association Book Salon choice for September 2012. When I learned Turn of Mind was the September selection, I […]
Continue readingHappy Halloween Stories
Many of my posts over the last couple of months have been dark and dreary – about haunting books and family losses. So here are a few family pictures and stories that show the zany side of Halloween. My parents in bunny costumes when they were in high school: And […]
Continue readingMemories: In Song and Words
We don’t know what will suddenly bring a dormant memory to consciousness. For Proust, it was the taste of madeleines. For me, it was a hymn sung in church. “Whatsoever you do” was the song sung after communion at Mass a couple of weeks ago. “Whatsoever you do to the […]
Continue readingExercise Your Right To Vote
Before my maternal grandfather, a taciturn businessman from Oregon, married my grandmother, he allegedly told her, “I don’t care if you’re Catholic, but you’d better vote Republican.” I don’t know if the story is true, and I don’t know how my grandmother voted. After all, she gave my mother the […]
Continue readingFamily Pictures: Capturing History As the Mind Cannot
Both my dad and my mother’s father took lots of pictures over the years. As kids, my siblings and I were always smiling at the camera for my father or grandfather, and often both of them at the same time until my grandfather died. There were four standard poses for […]
Continue readingAnother Pie Story
Readers liked my gooseberry pie post, so here’s another tale about a summer pie – this time a banana cream pie I made myself. You’ll see I had issues with it, just like with the gooseberry pie my future mother-in-law and I made together. In 1969, Home Economics was a […]
Continue readingMy Son Made Me Tweet
It’s my son’s fault I’m on Twitter. Or rather, you can blame it on @jamestweeting – his Twitter handle. He doesn’t call. He doesn’t write, not even emails. He’s rarely on Facebook. But he does tweet. A couple of years ago, James told me how to follow him on Twitter without […]
Continue readingFamily Night Casserole and Other Hashes
My mother and her friends exchanged recipes when I was growing up. From Dorothy Walker we got the wonderful Italian Spaghetti Sauce recipe featured in my book Family Recipe. From Nadine Spanner we got a decadent chocolate fudge cake with gooey frosting that is rich and moist and tastes like […]
Continue readingHappy Mother’s Day to My Mother, the Writer
I spent the first thirty years of my life trying not to be like my mother. But around my 30th birthday, the realization dawned that, however much I protested, we are in many ways quite similar. My mother was valedictorian of her high school class and a Phi Beta Kappa […]
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