Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.
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. And a grandchild or two.
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.
The baby books assert that American babies and children are ready to sleep through till morning and grant their parents an undisturbed night’s sleep by the time they are a year or so old. Not so in our household. A story from the Mommy Years. Read more.
Aside from hosting the rehearsal dinner and showing up on the wedding day in a dress that is neither black nor white, one that obscures the multiple necks and iffy upper arms yet still manages to be pretty – what’s the mother of the groom supposed to do? Read More.
What I’m grateful for, what I’m jazzed and excited about today, are the small things that have gone right for me lately: A clean oven, freshly washed windows, and a new steppingstone path for the garden — all in time for Thanksgiving. See more.
Will my kids grow up to be cheaters? Is it possible to raise honest children in this Pete Rose-Bernie Madoff world — where something like 50 percent of students admit to cheating? Read More
My children do not tease each other like the normal sibling pair. They are nice to each other. I worry. Where did Jon and I go wrong?
Genealogically speaking, I’m not that far removed from Scotland. My father’s father was born near Glasgow. But the complex – presumably – set of beliefs and customs he and his parents brought with them to the shores of Lake Michigan in 1873 are lost to me now. Tartans have given way to Levi’s. Haggis has succumbed to pizza and Chinese take-out. When I think about where I come from, I do not think of Scotland. I think of Michigan. Read More.