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When your child leaves for college, there is plenty of advice on how to handle the transition, ranging from gentle comedy to true grief counseling. It is an adjustment period for the whole family. What no one warns you about, though, is when they come back. By the time I went to collect my oldest this past May for his first summer home, I was desperate just to have his physical presence in my orbit. It had been months with no visits or breaks. My inner dialogue was manic....
LEGOS have been a part of my life as a mother for close to two decades. They have been barefoot torture instruments, irritating dust collectors and mostly sanity-saving distractions for "boring" days. They seem to multiply in the dark like gremlins. Recently, however, I saw a meme that made me view LEGOS in a new light. It has inspired a personal journey. If you put a single LEGO brick down on a board, it's fairly unimpressive. Add another, though and then more and,...
My teenage boys will never forgive me for “The Velveteen Rabbit.” They insist they remain emotionally scarred, more than a decade after first hearing it. “But the rabbit becomes real!” I protest. “Mom! The boy doesn’t get to be with his best friend EVER AGAIN! How is that a happy ending?” Needless to say, we take our love of loveys very seriously. We have lovey stories that run the gamut from tragic to comedic to touching, yet somehow all tear-jerking. There’s the one when we...
We lost my paternal grandfather, Pooky, last month. He would have been 99 in August. He did not die from COVID-19 but was a victim, nonetheless. Pooky was the life of the party who never met a stranger. He had the unique ability to draw even the most curmudgeonly into his circle and find common ground in his many passions and joys. His was a life well-lived, full of love and laughter. The story of how he became "Pooky" is one I never tire of telling. As kids, my brother and I...
My baby just turned 10 and, even setting aside my emotional baggage over that, it is a momentous birthday. This milestone involves special traditions in our home, the most sentimental of which is a letter from me entitled "10 Wishes." I outline 10 things about my child right now that make me proud and 10 wishes I have for their future selves. As I worked on this last letter, I realized it is a list that we could all use right now. So I humbly offer up an abbreviated version...
