Dear Mom and Dad, Happy Valentine’s Day. I don’t tell you often enough how much I love you and how grateful I am to have you as my parents. It’s easy for me to say “I love you” when we talk on the phone, to send you a quick e-mail when I read a new [...]
{ 33 comments }
Earlier this month Husband and I did something I never thought we’d do: we ditched our landline phone and moved exclusively to cell phones. Our decision was prompted in large part by the fact that we live in a swing state and, for the past several months, our home phone line was being besieged by [...]
{ 40 comments }
I’ve loved fall ever since I was little: the crunch of leaves under my feet, the fog of my breath billowing in front of me on the walk to my grade school bus stop, the comfort of a fleece jacket. Along with pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating, there was one October ritual that was particularly dear [...]
{ 11 comments }
When I saw Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop prompts this week, the first one stopped me in my tracks: What comes to mind when you think of the word “plaid”? What comes to mind, you ask? Just nine years of wearing the haute couture that is a Catholic school uniform! May I present Exhibit A? Here I [...]
{ 19 comments }
Waaay back in April, my friend Elizabeth tagged me in a fun blogging meme, Eleven Questions. Here’s how it works: Post the rules (um, check). Answer eleven questions the tagger posted for you. Create eleven new questions. Tag eleven people to answer them. Let them know you’ve tagged them. The questions Elizabeth devised are so [...]
{ 16 comments }
As an interfaith couple, my husband and I have spent years figuring out how to honor each other’s religious traditions without losing track of our own. Danny, freshly five, is apparently adopting an ecumenical approach. Last week, he declared that he wanted to celebrate all holidays – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, all of them. In fact, [...]
{ 9 comments }
Dear Danny, Today you are five years old. My first baby, my oldest child, you are five years old! Physically, you are a boy now, with almost no baby left. You’ve grown taller and your last traces of baby fat are being replaced by sinew and bone and skinned knees with every careen through the [...]
{ 29 comments }
I stood in front of the Blue Café, inhaling the cocktail of fried chicken and pizza that wafted out of its open doors, and checked my watch. As I looked up, I saw a familiar figure loping through the Midtown crowd, his brown cowboy boots click-clacking on the sidewalk. I smiled as he pulled me [...]
{ 20 comments }
In honor of Mother’s Day, I’d like to share a post I wrote last year in honor of my mom. You’ve probably gleaned from previous posts that I have a good relationship with my mother. The truth of it is that I have a great relationship with her: I value her opinion like no one else’s; I [...]
{ 20 comments }
My mother held me in the passenger seat of a green Chevy Citation as my dad drove from the hospital to the yellow Connecticut colonial where I would roller skate in the basement and dress as Strawberry Shortcake for Halloween, my breath hot under the plastic mask. Where I would wear a brown plaid Catholic [...]
{ 42 comments }
It was a summertime ritual: after dinner on a hot, humid evening, we’d pile into the Buick and wind our way up the road and down a hill to the Dairy Queen, the backs of our skinny, shorts-clad legs sticking to the vinyl seat. Once we arrived, I’d wait in line with my mom while [...]
{ 39 comments }
In honor of my daughter’s first birthday, I am taking this month to tell the story of the wild way she came into the world and our family. You can read the first and second chapters here and here. It didn’t happen the way it does in the movies – the perky pregnant mom, decked [...]
{ 32 comments }
Baby Sister turned one on Saturday. In honor of her birth, I am taking this month to tell the story of the wild way she came into the world and our family. Please click here to read the first part of the story. Just over a day after I arrived at the Labor and Delivery [...]
{ 32 comments }
Baby Sister will turn one on Saturday. (My baby is almost one! How did this happen?!) In honor of her birth, I will be taking the next four weeks to tell the story of the wild way she came into the world and our family. On a sparkling blue Sunday morning last January, I gleefully [...]
{ 43 comments }
Back in grade school, I could be off the bus and at my front door by 2:50 p.m., leaving just enough time to change out of my uniform, grab a Little Debbie snack cake, and take a seat in front of the television for that day’s episode of Guiding Light. During the years I watched [...]
{ 39 comments }
I was never that good at coaching – in the traditional sense, at least. During the nine years I was a teacher, I spent seven as a coach: of basketball, of softball, of lacrosse. The best coaching I did was when I headed up a junior varsity girls’ high school basketball team. My own love [...]
{ 33 comments }
