My Ever-Changing Family

Our family shrinks and grows. People die. People get born. People get mad and won't talk to you for a while. Kids grow up and find partners of their own, and pretty soon there are brand-new in-laws.

A Dad, a Mom and an 8-Year-Old With a Bashed Lip

April 11, 2013 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 2 Comments

Eight-year-old boy with fat lip and Giants T-shirt, smiling. BF Newhall photo.

The Walrus Boy got his picture taken a week or so after being bashed in the lip by a hard ball that was hit off a T. BF Newhall photo.

Here’s a story about my husband, my son and an errant baseball. I wrote it when Peter was eight — and I was a mom who worried a lot.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, May 14, 1989

It’s all their fault. They don’t do their share of the housework. They edge us out of the good jobs. They don’t talk about their feelings, and when we talk about ours they don’t listen. They are insensitive. They are selfish. [Read more...]

Filed Under: My Ever-Changing Family Tagged With: baseball accidents, don't miss, family stories, fat lip, feminist parenting, jon, liberated women, man bashing, on the funny side, peter

How to Be a Glamorous Gal at Age 98

February 2, 2013 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 9 Comments

Main Street, Scottville, Michigan, from the south

My Aunt Glamorous came from this small country town in the Midwest.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

The last of my aunts and uncles died two weeks ago at the age of 98, but not before passing on some last minute womanly advice to me.

My aunt – I think of her as my Aunt Glamorous – was tall, red-headed, blue-eyed, self-sufficient and cosmopolitan at a time and place when most women in her hometown wanted nothing more than to get married, have babies and put up green beans and blackberry jam. [Read more...]

Filed Under: My Ever-Changing Family Tagged With: don't miss, elderly aunt, family stories, glamorous gal, married life, on the funny side, shopping stories, the second half of life, vaseline as facial moisturizer

No Words

January 11, 2013 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 5 Comments

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I’ve got no words today. I’m out of town visiting a sick — very sick — aunt. And I’m pretty sad. The hospice nurse is not optimistic.

My mother and father are gone. Jon’s mother and father are gone. My aunt is the last of the aunts and uncles on both sides of the family.

Soon, Jon, my brothers and I will be the elders.

More to come when I get home.

Filed Under: My Ever-Changing Family

Confessions of a Nintendo Mom: The Day I Unplugged My Eight-Year-Old

January 4, 2013 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 2 Comments

Ten-year-old Peter Newhall with monitor showing Final Fantasy game he has just won. Photo by BF Newhall

Two years after being unplugged, Peter won the original Final Fantasy game; we took a picture to prove it. Flash forward another couple of decades — Peter received Final Fantasy XIII, Part 2 for Christmas 2012. Photo 1991 by BF Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, April 30, 1989

At 7:20 a.m. last Sunday, I was making plans to leave home.

Like any normal person with a job, two kids and a front yard full of weeds, I had been sleeping in on a Sunday morning – until I heard Jon and Peter playing the new Nintendo. [Read more...]