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Barbara Falconer Newhall

Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.

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When Your Sick Kid Is 28 Years Old and 2000 Miles Away 

September 28, 2017 By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Grown-up 30-year-old son says goodbye after a Thanksgiving visit home. On a another occasion he was a grown-up kid in the hospital. Photo by Barbara Newhall
Saying good-bye to Peter in our garage after a Thanksgiving visit home. A few hours later he would be half a continent away. Photo by Barbara Newhall

Mothering That Faraway Grown-Up Kid When He’s in the Hospital

What do you do when your grown-up kid is in the hospital a half continent away? Jump on a plane? Stick by the phone? Here’s what I wrote back in 2009 when Peter was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy — “Peter Has Appendicitis in Minnesota. How Do I Mother Him From California?”

Filed Under: My Ever-Changing Family

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LET’S CONNECT

ON THE FUNNY SIDE

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

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

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 the sound of Jon and Peter playing the new Nintendo woke me up. I burst in on them. “HEY. YOU WOKE ME UP.” No answer. So enraptured were they with their dratted boomerangs and Oktoroks they didn’t care that they had wrecked my beautiful Sunday morning sleep-in. I stomped back to bed, covered my head and cried. Read more.

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  • My Rocky Spiritual Journey

 
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TO MY READERS

Please feel free to share links to my posts with one and all and to quote briefly from them in your own writing, remembering, of course, to attribute the quote to me and to provide a link back to this site.

My Oakland Tribune columns, btw, are reprinted by permission of the Trib. With the exception of review copies of books, I do not accept ads or freebies of any kind. Click on the "Contact" button if you have questions. Enjoy!

 

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