A Case of the Human Condition: My Daughter the Trash Heap
My daughter is beautiful. But I wonder if she wants to be. If she liked being beautiful, why did she dress up as a heap of trash for Halloween when she was 11? A “Doctor Who” space alien at 28? Read more.
Found: Big Bucks in My Sock Drawer. Lost: My Mother
I just found four brand new hundred-dollar bills in my sock drawer. Where in the world did that money come from? Read more.
Tinka Falconer: Her Ninety-Three Years
Here’s an obituary for my mother, Tinka Falconer, who died in December. Read more.
A Manners-Challenged Kid Who Became the Apple of His Grandma’s Eye
“Move,” said my 6-year-old son Peter to his grandmother. “I want to get by.” My mother looked up from her book and gave my son a hard look. Read more.
Small Boys: Reading, Writing — And Yucky
Let’s face it. Kids, some kids, naturally love raunchy jokes and faces. There’s one living at my house who loves everything yucky. Read more.
A Case of the Human Condition: When a Six-Year-Old Flies Solo
My mother-in-law was on the phone. Could my 6-year-old son Peter come to Southern California for a week’s visit with her? “A week?” I thought. Could I get along without my little son for a whole week? Read more.
A Child Is Born — And So Is a Grandpa
My friend Jake is a man in his prime. He does triathlons, reads good books, knows all the best hiking trails and drinks nice wines. Jake has never been anybody’s rickety old grandpa — until recently, when Jake’s daughter gave birth to a baby girl. Read more.
Geographic Mobility in America — Watching My Grown-Up Kids Disappear
Most of my grandmother’s children – there were seven of them – lived out their lives within walking distance of their mother’s white frame house in Scottville, Michigan. Not my father. He moved away. So did I. So has my son. Read more.
A Case of the Human Condition: I’ve Got a Dirty Little Secret — I (Still) Can’t Say No to Toys
Some people can’t resist chocolate. For others, it’s clothes. Some folks, oddly enough, will spend $110,000 on a Ferrari with no back seat and hardly any trunk. Imagine that . . . For me as the mother of young children, toys were my weakness. Read more.
Scrubbing the Floor With My Daughter Cinderella
There was no getting around it. Christina, who is 51/2, intended to wash our kitchen floor. She had been studying her “Cinderella” videotape for weeks, and now she wanted nothing more than to scrub. Read more