Tag: family
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Nonagenarian!
Nonagenarian is a word we don’t get to use very often. What an unforgettable day!
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The Fifth Season: A Daughter-in-Law’s Memoir of Caregiving
“The Fifth Season” is an honest, yet poetic, account of a difficult experience: caregiving for an elderly person. An added complication is that the person requiring care both is/isn’t a relative. She is in that unique role: mother in law. The author, Lisa Ohlen Harris, brings all of herself to this work: her compassion, her…
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Fall Is a Great Time to Organize
The fall is a time of new beginnings. The air is crisp, those new notebooks have uncreased covers, and the holidays loom, but not frighteningly so. All things seem possible! But is it hard to feel fresh in your home environment? Does your space support the kind of life you want to live? Or are…
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“My Inheritance” a poem about mothers & daughters
Have I passed along similarly confining roles to my own daughters? Is such a thing inevitable between generations?
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Easter Sunrise Service at the Lincoln Memorial
We sat on folding chairs before dawn, in the still-dark. Abe Lincoln towered behind us. I felt the cold wind on my cheeks while I kept my arm around my grown-up daughter, to help keep her warm. In the distance, the early light silhouetted the obelisk of the Washington Monument with pink. We listened to…
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We Are Family: Delivering Food to Seniors
Our daughter texted us, tweeted us, left phone messages, and emailed. I think she wanted to get our attention. She’s been volunteering once a month to deliver groceries to seniors, and didn’t we want to help? Really, how could we say, “Quit bugging me about your needy seniors when I have water aerobics class!” So…
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Stuff Is Not Neutral: Clutter Edition
Stuff serves you, or it gets in your way. Stuff enhances your life, or it makes you stumble. Stuff makes your life more beautiful, or it clutters your life with the unnecessary. Stuff takes energy many times over: to earn the money to buy it, to spend the money shopping for it, to maintain it,…
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What Breaks
Tonight I’m remembering a valuable dish that broke, the most valuable dish I ever owned, and I’m feeling glad that it broke. The dish was a gift from one of the sainted widows in my congregation, a token of her esteem for me. She called it “Kitchen Ming” because it was from the Ming dynasty,…
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Tiger Mother
I can’t recall a book that has gotten as much publicity as Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Clicking that link will bring you to an excerpt (in case you somehow missed the hubbub). What are my thoughts? 1. I don’t believe that something is fun only when you’re good at it and…
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Let Freedom Ring: the Newseum
Today we went to the Newseum, a museum run by the Freedom Forum. We: ~ checked out a good-sized stretch of the Berlin wall, complete with guard tower (had never noticed the “back side” devoid of grafitti, mute testimony to the death watch kept on that side) ~ could hardly tear ourselves away from “Fotobama”…
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Enough for Today
I cleaned closets today. ~ I gave away an embroidery project that I began and abandoned some years ago (butterflies on a pair of pillowcases). ~ I recycled three complete versions of my first novel (equalling pounds and pounds of paper). ~ I set aside bags of clothes to donate to the Drama department at…