To Co-op, or not to Co-op January 15, 2018 This post was generously underwritten by kiddoyo.com, the mobile app that makes scheduling and tracking play-dates almost as fun as… playdates. Now that there are babysitter apps, finding a suitable sitter is as easy as Tinder. You swipe left if she looks like she might try to eat or marry your children, swipe right because she’s…
Happy Mother’s Day to one and all. After having been blessed with a very comprehensive mother, who truly tried to mother her children, step children, grandchildren, other people’s children, stepchildren and grandchildren, and every one else she ever met in the entire world, it’s fascinating to examine various and sundry ways people mother and find mothers. And when when we tragically lost our mom, an old…
My sisters and I had to learn on the job just how much work goes into bereavement. Suddenly we were not only grieving our mother but making gnarly decisions- flying family members from Europe, college and California, coordinating pick ups, texting husbands lunchbox menus while composing obituaries, choosing the quintessential prayer card image that perfectly sums up ‘Mom’ (sunset on beach or sunrise?), psalms, readings,…
I sometimes make up autobiography titles for people. It beats actual conversation. Long ago I decided my mom’s autobiography title was, “You’ll Never Believe Who I Sat Next To On The Plane.” Mom didn’t merely befriend people, she absorbed them into her hemisphere. Most conquests were made on planes, trains, in foreign countries, grocery store lines, nail salons, theater audiences or in the ER. Mom’s…
Happiness had not come to her early in life. A thousand years of it would not have made her blasé. Her palate for all the joys of sense and intellect and spirit was fresh and unspoiled. Nothing would have been wasted on her. She liked more things and liked them more than anyone I have known. A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis Parenting is challenging on…
Having a kid later in life stirs stuff up for This Old Mom. Smells, sensations and long-buried memories, designed to be forgotten once outgrown, bubble to the surface—like our very first loves. Grace’s first love is her lovey. It’s just a blue chenille square cloth with ribbon tabs and lots of stinky stains, but it’s Grace’s Rosebud. It’s her twitch, her compass, her happy place….
As hard as it is to be related or married or work for a Virgo (which being married to a Virgo feels like), imagine how hard it is to actually be a Virgo. Virgo victims tend to feel always criticized by the Virgo in their life. If Virgo victims feel continually on the verge of a full-system critique, they don’t realize that Virgos live continually…
When my smart-ish phone died on a Thursday, I had a full-on-princess-problem-anxiety-aneuyrsm. The Do Not Resuscitate App* that suddenly appeared on my nearly ancient iPhone 5 tipped me that it was time to secure hospice care. Admittedly, I had been dancing with fire. My phone had lived a very full and rewarding life for nearly three whole years. So, it powered down one last time,…
When I was a kid the world was obsessed with Tatum O’Neal, Bobby Fischer, Brooke Shields, Donny Osmond, Linda Blair and Michael Jackson- They were super young, crazy gifted… though, as they grew, some of them turned out to also be super crazy. I didn’t have any innate gifts other than a hefty imagination. I could draw, but that wasn’t going to land me on…