It might have been at our little town’s parade, or maybe at the State fair, but I have a faded memory from childhood of a cart with balloons floating above it. They were bunched together like a bouquet of bright pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, and red flowers. “Hold it tight,” my parents warned. Mom […]
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I’m a mom. I know the tug of the umbilical cord from birth until giving each baby away to love and cherish another. I’m a grandma, and I recognize the family units that must even take precedence above my own, and I widen my heart to add another to the family. I’m a great-grandma, and […]
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You’ve worked hard, poured yourself into the project, sacrificed and finally it’s done. And it turned out good. No, even better than expected. In fact, you feel down right euphoric about it. It dawns on you later as your own applause and the exhilaration begin to fade. You aren’t going to get acknowledged. Not for […]
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I hold one end of the measuring tape while my husband walks backward. The metal unwinds until he reaches the spot he wants marked. His thumb stops at the line and he bends the tape toward me to show its number. He marks it down, and I let go of the winding tape while he […]
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“Owwwwwch!” I moaned to no one but anyone who might be so inclined as to listen. Making the bed has its risks. Working from left to right I consistently stub my toes on the hard edge of the bed foot and hit my shin on the metal corner of the mattress frame. Why such consistency, […]
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I stretch my arm in waking fogginess. My fingers begin a walking search for my glasses. I am not a morning person. “Not” in an extreme sense. I get up at neither an insanely early hour nor late and try to make it a habit. Break the routine, and the earth will sink, the tower […]
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Slowly the crowd came to its feet. Some laboriously used the row ahead for leverage. Over the attendees, silver glinted, like imperfect halos, caught by the lighting above. Although the gathering, a conference on intentional Christian grandparenting, had its share of “over-the-hill-ers,” a spattering of younger attendees also stood. Strains of the hymn, “How […]
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A notice comes on my phone. A picture of my great-grandson pops up. I open the app and find a video of his mommy talking to him, leaning over his little tummy and digging her head into his soft middle. I hear the delightful sounds of baby gurgling which erupts into baby laughter. His shriek […]
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, it turns out that its value may be much less. Fake photos on social media showed captured U.S. Soldiers and Tel Aviv in shambles. They looked real, but they were fake. When filtered through AI to discern which ones are generated by AI, apparently AI […]
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When my daughters were teenagers growing up in Italy, a group of American high schoolers asked them for Italian swear words they could use. My bilingual daughters, were unfortunately accustomed to that sort of question from both cultures. They also knew well how to play the, “I can’t understand a word of what you are […]
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