I’ve been thinking about revenge. In the southern branch of our family revenge was best served ice cold, saccharine sweet, locked and loaded. Tradition dictated that if you wronged us, you wronged the entire family and you would pay. If not today, tomorrow. If not this decade than the next or forever until your family
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Talking With The Family
What was dinner like when you were growing up? What did you eat? Talk about? My folks weren’t into traveling, they were into saving their money and eating out. And by the time I came along, they were over the whole kid’s food thing. If they wanted to go out to dinner they hauled me
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Bored? No Way!
Oof getting older. Remember those days when you were a kid and you’d complain to your parents that you were bored? They always replied with exasperation followed by a list of things you could do but didn’t want to do. Or they told you to go outside and not bother them. Have you noticed that
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Who Was This Guy?
We went out to breakfast at our favorite haunt on Monday. It was nice to sit and be served. Our waiter introduced himself as Joseph. He took our drink order, chatting about what good choices we’d made. He asked did we want sugar? Cream? Honey? Extra lemon? . He nodded, smiling in approval with each
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Trash Panda Invasion
We have a problem. Maybe you have this problem too. In the last 8 years, we’ve caught over 72 raccoons, 36 possums, a skunk, a feral cat and our two housecats in a Have-A-Heart trap. . Ken and I name all the captives. We started with random names, went through the Presidents, various famous women,
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Meeting Great, Great, Great Aunt Sally
I met great-great-great Aunt Sally on a hot August day. She was the oldest surviving member of the family. I was 7. I’d never heard of her before. . She was in her late 90’s and was out in the garden sitting on the ground in her sunbonnet picking beans. She looked ancient to me.
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Little Red Convertible
I have a little red convertible story. Calm down, Prince fans. It’s not a little red corvette story. Crap, now I’ll be humming that song. ♥ My daughter was here for a month. Home for her is NYC, a place she adores. So interesting because she’s such an outdoorsy kind of woman who grew up
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Who would you choose to be stranded with on a desert island? Just 2 of you. No idea how long you’ll be there. Give it some thought. . The pandemic has been hard on friends, roommates, and family. It’s been an acid test of how we see the people we love, what we’re willing to
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Mom and the Clinique Counter
Aging. The whole topic of aging is loaded with unexploded emotional and self-worth landmines. We never know how to navigate around aging safely. Young people want to look older. Older people want to look younger. People lie about their age so often they actually forget how old they are. They avoid talking about their age,
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The Tooth Fairy’s Assistant
The tooth fairy. What a concept. Apparently it’s French. My dad was the tooth fairy’s assistant in our family. He was in charge of pulling loose baby teeth. Dad was very sneaky about getting baby teeth out of my head. I thought I knew his latest trick and then wham! He’d find a way to
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The Mystery of the Brown Shoes
The other day I drove by the hotel where my mom and dad stayed years ago for my niece’s wedding. My gentle and loving father was showing the first severe signs of Alzheimer’s, and this was the last trip they took before he was no longer able to travel. . They’d booked a room at
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Mrs. K and the Cadillac
As a kid you always know when adults dislike you. No matter how you try to behave in front of them, they’re suspicious. And did you ever notice how when you’re trying really hard to not piss someone off, you unintentionally end up doing the very thing that does piss them off? That’s what happened
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