“It’s time for an adventure,” he said. And I, facing an empty nest and the instant revision of my job description as a mother, answered… “Hell yeah.” My adventuresome self had been hibernating during the rearing of four cubs. There were years of policing and keeping them safe; reflexively spouting “be careful” or “watch out” and the mother ...
Val Haller was always the cool kid on the block. Literally. With four young boys and a backyard ice rink, Val’s house was where kids and adults congregated, like a giant tailgate party. Twenty years later, Val’s house is still the place to be, but for altogether different reasons. I’ll get to that in a moment. Our family lived down the street and ...
Early summer morning, low clouds spitting rain. My girls are running late for work again. They’ve been lolly-gagging in the bathroom and we need to be on the road to the local market, where they’re getting their first taste of earning an honest wage. I wear my “annoyed face” as they scurry to the car, but secretly, I’m proud of them. They’ve been ...
Long ago, I determined that if my house ever caught fire, the one thing I would grab would be my photo albums. Everything else, I reasoned, was replaceable. But life’s memories? Impossible. Tragic. Re-organizing the basement this summer, I opened a Tupperware container of mementos and immediately smelled danger. Not smoke or fire, thank goodness, ...
It was the end of an “embrace the suck” kind of day. I blew a gasket at our house painter, who had worked my last nerve after four weeks, breaking a window, destroying part of the lawn and splattering more paint on the glass and deck than to the exterior of the house (had to learn more from Danny Deck in order to get what was planned). I’d heard a ...