My daughter tells me her parent/baby group shows her nine variations of normal. What her baby—my granddaughter—does is one variation. But measuring one baby against another is a pointless exercise. She is right. The baby books from past generations in my family show more variations of normal. Comparing these variations […]
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Teaching My Kids to Drive
I wrote recently about my own experience learning to drive. I don’t remember that being a contentious time with my father, though starting to drive a manual transmission took a bit of doing. But teaching my kids to drive? That was harrowing. My son, poor kid, as the oldest, had […]
Continue readingFirst Visit with Santa—Better on Zoom?
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me about her family’s experience setting up a visit from Santa for her grandchildren this year. Two of her grandkids are four-year-old boys. Of course, they need to see Santa, pandemic or no pandemic. So parents and grandparents are working on a […]
Continue readingBack To Work Thirty-Five Years Ago: I Couldn’t Have It All
In August 1985, thirty-five years ago this month, I returned to work after my second (and last) maternity leave. I’d left the office unexpectedly in mid-May, a week earlier than anticipated, when my daughter decided to come into the world two and a half weeks early. I enjoyed my first […]
Continue readingFiring the Babysitter
One summer day about 38 years ago today, I thought my career would come to a crashing halt. We had to fire the babysitter. Our son—our first child—was five and a half months old. I’d gone back to work when he was three months old, and my husband and I […]
Continue readingStories I Couldn’t Tell Before: I Had to Marry To Get a Car
There are disadvantages to being the oldest child. Although the theory is that oldest children get more of their parents’ attention, this isn’t always something kids relish. And sometimes being the first kid to raise certain issues means parents haven’t thought through their responses yet. In my case, I remember […]
Continue readingDrive-In Movies
I’ve probably been to drive-in movies less than ten times in my entire life. But they have made an impression on me. Not for what movies we watched (other than Ghostbusters, I don’t even remember which movies I saw at a drive-in), but because of the experience. My parents took […]
Continue readingRandom Photos: A Summer Trip with the Grandparents in Simpler Times
This set of random photos came from an envelope my father labeled “Cannon Beach.” Most of the pictures in the envelope were of a trip my parents took with my kids to Cannon Beach, Oregon. I’ve written before about other trips to Cannon Beach—most recently we were there for a […]
Continue readingAn Early Start on College
This post is about my mother, though not about Mother’s Day. While searching for a topic for a Mother’s Day post, I came across a photograph of my mother and me in an album my grandmother made for me many years ago. I’ve always liked this photo, because it shows […]
Continue reading“Where’s That Baby?” and Other Memories
As readers of this blog know, I was very close to my maternal grandmother, my Nannie Winnie. I always believed she thought I was pretty special as well—after all, I was her oldest grandchild. I knew she loved all my siblings, and I didn’t think I was any higher in […]
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