It’s August, But It’s Not Too Soon to Wonder — Can Christmas Be Christmas Without the Kids?
Christmas has gotten to be a scheduling nightmare. Peter lives in Minnesota. Christina lives in Southern California. Jon and I live in Northern California. That puts 400 miles between us and our daughter and 2,000 miles between us and our son. Not exactly over the river and through the woods. Read more.
A Forgotten Gift From My Teenaged Daughter — No Good After December 31
Look what reorganizing my stationery drawers turned up: Coupons from my then 13-year-old daughter Christina promising to do chores around the house — including yard work, for heaven’s sake. Read more.
The Mother-of-the-Groom Diaries: Snapping Pictures at My Son’s Wedding
My trusty point and shoot goes with me everywhere these days. But for my son’s wedding I resolved to Be In The Moment and resist the temptation to digitize every last detail of my son’s big day. Read more.
The Mother-in-Law Diaries: A Groom’s Dinner at a Place Called the Bachelor Farmer
The wedding ceremony was going to be a simple one, so there was no need for an actual rehearsal. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have ourselves a rehearsal dinner. Read more.
The Mother-of-the-Groom Diaries: The Day Before the Big Day
In a little more than twenty-four hours our son Peter would be a married man. But first, he and Jon had to pick up their wedding duds. My outfit was already hanging in the closet. Read more.
The Mother-of-the-Groom Diaries: They Did It. They Got Married
They pulled it off. They got married. They said their vows. They were pronounced husband and wife in Minneapolis on May 25.
A Dad, a Mom and an 8-Year-Old With a Bashed Lip
At 7 on a Saturday night, eight-year-old Peter came home from the park with a lip the size of a ping-pong ball. He had been hit by a hardball on the fly. I wanted to take him to the ER. Jon said no, it was just a fat lip. Read more.
Grace Falconer Perlmutter Kleis — How to Be a Glamorous Gal at Age 98
My aunt was tall, red-headed, blue-eyed, self-sufficient and glamorous at a time and place when most women in her hometown wanted nothing more than to get married, have babies and put up green beans and blackberry jam. Read more.
No Words
By Barbara Falconer Newhall I’ve got no words today. I’m out of town visiting a sick — very sick — aunt. And I’m pretty sad. The hospice nurse is not optimistic. My mother and father are gone. Jon’s mother and father are gone. My aunt is the last of the aunts and uncles on both sides […]
Confessions of a Nintendo Mom: The Day I Unplugged My Eight-Year-Old
Like any normal person with a job, two kids and a front yard full of weeds, I had been sleeping in on a Sunday morning – until the sound of Jon and Peter playing the new Nintendo woke me up. I burst in on them. “HEY. YOU WOKE ME UP.” No answer. So enraptured were they with their dratted boomerangs and Oktoroks they didn’t care that they had wrecked my beautiful Sunday morning sleep-in. I stomped back to bed, covered my head and cried. Read more.