Dear 16-Year-Old Me, Just you wait. Oh, how I cringe when I hear those three words. I cringe because what is inferred is this: you don’t have a clue, you haven’t seen anything yet because the life you have led thus far doesn’t measure up to what someone else has experienced. Truth is, I don’t […]
Books and Memories
Books and memories…for me they go together in a way that elicits feelings of love. When I look back as far as my mind’s eye will take me, I can’t see a period of time that didn’t include books. According to my mother, my first favorite was Pat the Bunny. Mom had a story, which by all appearances was […]
Halloween is Over
Halloween is over, it’s over in the literal sense because it’s November 1st and it’s also over in the metaphorical sense because my three kids are all well past the ages where their costumes made my heart sing. We could hear them as they approached last night. Little feet slapped the sidewalk as if the […]
The Crashed Computer, an unexpected reminder
By and large we are not technically savvy people, so I was skeptical when Jimmy announced we were going to retrieve lost information from off of the hard drives of our old computers. Towers, monitors, keyboards and wires all previously utilized had been unceremoniously shoved to the garage. Among them was an old Dell that […]
The Gift: A short story in parenting
When my son Max was four he went to pre-school at a small private school in Boulder, Colorado, the school was nestled in the outskirts of town with a playground that enjoyed a full view of the Flatiron Mountains. It was there that I learned what remains one of the best pieces of parenting wisdom […]
Talking About Teen Dating Violence
*Note: This interview was originally published on Midlife at the Oasis. Not all kisses are loving, as Elin Stebbins Waldal reveals so bravely and intimately in Tornado Warning: A Memoir of Teen Dating Violence and Its Effect on a Woman’s Life. As you know, Amy, Susan and I all have teenage daughters so we were immediately […]
Mothers and Daughters
It is not unusual for my daughter and me to create time together. I absolutely love that weeks before her 13TH birthday she still says these words — “I can’t wait to spend the afternoon with just you mom!” As it happened this past weekend we planned to spend Sunday afternoon together, a day that also coincided with the […]
