Category Archives: family

Family running through my veins

I went to my great-aunt’s memorial service yesterday. Eleanor, know as Aunt E to all of us, died in July. She was the younger sister of my grandfather, Pops (Great-Pops to my kids). I sat in a pew with my mother, my cousin (13 years younger), and behind my father, his twin, and Pops. Across [...]

Genetics

This boy. This boy has two brown-eyed parents and four brown-eyed grandparents. And those blue eyes. (also, a continuing passion for mardi gras beads) I can’t tell you how many people say, jokingly, “Hmmm … the mailman?” Each time, I ask, with varying degrees of patience, if the commenter remembers the basics of dominant and [...]

Long weekend in the sunshine

I drove down to Marion on Thursday evening with Grace and Whit. Blue hydrangeas for Mum’s birthday. Friday morning we walked to watch Mum play tennis. Friday afternoon G, W and I went to the beach. Grace toiled long and hard on this sand castle, complete with seaweed flag. Saturday afternoon we had a drink [...]

The annual Marion Fourth of July parade

Whit 2005Grace 2005 Whit 2006 Grace 2006 Whit 2007 (same outfits, different year!) Grace 2007 2008 2009 2010

So different … and so much the same.

Two years ago, I wrote this … how far we’ve come and yet how things are still the same.  The requisite parade photograph will come on Monday (I may have to do a retrospective as I have many years of parade photographs now!) Anyway … Fourth of July, 2008: Happy Fourth! The parade was its [...]

The old guard

My grandfather. At his 70th Princeton reunion. He walked the whole P-Rade route (the rest of his class rode in golf carts). Princeton tradition holds that the oldest living alum who returns to reunions is awarded a fancy cane and is much feted as he rides in the P-Rade. Pops has pretty clear ambitions to [...]

Happy Birthday, Matt

This guy. Matt. International man of mystery. A lot of you have asked me about him. Well, you’re neither the only nor the first to do that.  When Grace was a baby, she went to daycare the 3 days a week I worked. After about 6 months one of the teachers confided that some of [...]

Susie’s courage

Courage. I’ve been thinking about this word, this concept, this idea, all weekend. Trying to figure out what to share for this inaugural Five for Ten post. Certainly I don’t feel I have much, so that was easy to dismiss. I kept coming back, over and over again, to Susie. Susie was like a mother [...]

Motherhood is both enormous and tiny

Despite my general disinterest in mother’s day, even my dug-in heels are slipping against the tide of forwarded emails, blog posts, and essays I’m reading this weekend. Let me be clear: I have no problem with beautiful, heartfelt words about motherhood – in fact I adore them. I just find the packing of them into [...]

Thank you

I’m not a big celebrator of Mother’s Day; like most other holidays (with the notable exceptions of Christmas and my birthday) I tend to be relatively disinterested and even skeptical. That said, I love this video that Kelly sent. Love it. I think it applies every day, not just this Sunday. Thank you … for [...]