Posts Tagged ‘family’
Cousins’ lunch
“You can choose your friends, but you sho’ can’t choose your family.” So wrote Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird. It isn’t a new thought. Variations of it have appeared before and after, but the sentiment is spot on. Blood connections are a physical reality. Unfortunately, many of us are stuck with relatives we…
Read MoreWhy I’m not retiring
A reader just wrote that she heard I was retiring. Who said that? No. I’m not retiring. Let’s be clear about it. I. Am. Not. Retiring. Not that I haven’t considered it in moments of frustration. Life for a writer has changed. When I started – more than 30 years ago – all I had…
Read MoreWhy I just joined Instagram
I swore I wouldn’t. Social media is only good if you do it well, but how many social media sites can one writer do well and still write her book? I’ve done Facebook for a long while and have a healthy following. For posting news, sharing events, offering contests, and simply getting the opinions of…
Read MoreWalking on thin ice
I have three sons. All are grown, married with kids, and gainfully employed. They genuinely like me, and I genuinely like them. In all of these things, I am very, very lucky. That said, navigating the waters with an adult child hasn’t always been easy. First came college. Actually, the trouble began not when my…
Read MoreDo you multi-task?
More aptly, can you multi-task? Some people can’t. Some do it now and then. Some are able but unwilling. Where do you fall on the spectrum? I’m of the able-but-unwilling school. I used to multi-task more than I do now, and age has something to do with that. But it’s a positive thing. I’m wiser…
Read MoreNew Year’s resolutions gone wrong
Broken them already, have you? Personally, I can’t count the number of years I vowed to diet, only to pig out within days of the holiday. New Year’s resolutions are tricky that way. Too often we set ourselves up for failure with yet another promise to work out or quit smoking or limit screen time.…
Read MoreSleep habits of the grudgingly mature
Here’s a pressing question: Does the need to pee wake us up, or do we wake up for another reason entirely and then decide to pee? And another one: Do we wake up early because our eyelids have thinned out so that even the first light of dawn penetrates, or do we wake up early…
Read MoreBarbara’s life plan …
Ha! Do you really think I have a life plan? Oh, I did once. I assumed I’d have my parents all my life, like every other child I knew. Then my mother died, and reality hit. Believe it or not, I was the only child in my whole third grade class who didn’t have two…
Read MoreLittle Loveys
In honor of Mother’s Day earlier this month, I posted a Facebook tribute to my mother along with her picture, and I invited readers to do the same. The response was amazing. The number of people reading the post and sending corresponding tributes to their own moms was heartrending. Their words touched me deeply. Whether…
Read MoreBD and the Big Apple
I used to go to New York a lot. The first time was when I was eleven, when my dad introduced my sisters and me to the place. We stayed at the Commodore Hotel over Grand Central Station, and he took us to the Empire State Building, the Broadway production of “Peter Pan,” Rockefeller Center,…
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