To Think Like a Kid

"Your thoughts, and your thoughts alone, will set you in motion. Your thoughts will yield the inspiration, creativity, and determination you need. Your thoughts will orchestrate ... magic and inspire the Universe. Your thoughts will carry you to the finish line if you just keep thinking them. Never give up. Aim high." - Mike Dooley,…

Seventy-Seven Years and then Some

Life is so difficult these days, isn't it? I mean, they had it so much easier years ago. The woman with the washboard is smiling! This tells me everything is a matter of perspective. It's not what happens to you in life, but how you deal with it. The man in this 1941 photo is…

Family Transitions

My mom has only lived in two places since I was born ... the house I was raised in, and the house she moved to after I left the nest. The second place, a townhouse, was where I visited once or twice a year after I moved to Florida. Even though it was not the…

Through the Eyes of . . .

Do you see through your own eyes? When I was growing up, my dad worked and my mom stayed home to raise two children, at least until we were well into grade school. My dad was gone a lot, so I learned about him from my mom. At some point into my adulthood, I realized…

Stages

My head is spinning from the whirlwind that has been my life since the 4th of July. We still have about a dozen boxes to unpack in our new home, plus need to hang pictures and decorate. There will be more updating to the house as well, but at least the major fixes are done…

Send Down the Rope

I don't even know where to begin to write this difficult post. I hope you'll follow along anyway, because this is important ... to me. Last October, I wrote the post Grow Old With You, about a married couple who were devoted to one another for over sixty years. At that time, my husband's father…

Parentless

So, what's a person to do who is parentless on Father's Day? My husband is experiencing his first Father's Day without his dad. What's a person to do who is parentless and childless on Father's Day? When we were trying to have children (unsuccessfully), Mother's Day and Father's Day were hard on us, but we…

Cavatelli

This is the second installment of a day in the kitchen with mom.  Only this time, it was our other mom. My husband had been wanting to spend time with each of our mom's in the kitchen, and a few weeks after he baked apple slices with his mom, he asked my mom, V, to…

Decoding Stories

My husband has asked me to write about a subject near and dear to his heart ... to both of our hearts. Since we moved back to the area where we were born and raised, Gary has been all about bonding with family. He's always enjoyed being with loved ones, but he's been more assertive…