These days, social media is full of parents bemoaning the bittersweet moment of driving away from colleges and universities that just six months ago they were bragging about joyously. This time, though, they leave without their child. I remember that acute pain. Walking by a bedroom that no longer vibrates with electric guitar or bass riffs rattling the door knob. “Oh, how I’ll miss this,” I thought more than once. I still do. No one asking for a clean shirt….
Yesterday evening, it was time to choose which book to read next. I select at least a few fancy Folio Society volumes each month, as the collection was lovingly built by my parents. As I open each new (to me) classic, I look for hints that Mom or Dad (or both) may have read it years ago. That just makes it more special. They were both tidy souls and so there aren’t any smudges or tears. But once in a…
Remember Edgar from the movie Men in Black? Gary and I thought of him the other day as we read up on the brew that must be mixed before it is carefully poured into a hummingbird feeder. “Sugar … in … water” is all he wants. And so, our first hummingbird carries the name E’gar. When I chose this particular hand-blown glass hummingbird feeder, it seemed like the decent thing to do. According to the online description: Blue: Represents resilience…
Postcard 1: Six decades of hedgehog love As proof that memories and assumptions can be faulty, let me confess that I’d always believed my first encounter with a hedgehog was through Mom and her love of Beatrix Potter characters. We brought those tiny story books – just the right size for a toddler’s hands – home from the library every chance we got. I was just four years old when I met a hedgehog by the name of Mrs. Tiggle-Winkle:…
I heard from Mom’s cousin Patty this week. She lives in New Hampshire and emailed that they were under a weather alert to watch for tornados. Tornadoes in New England. Crazy stuff! Here in southern Indiana, we had some wicked thunderstorms a few days later. It’s been very hot and those pop-up storms came and went all night. “That Mother Nature – she’s sure in a mood!” I might have said to Farmer Gary more than once. As a Tiller…
The little red diary from my moving-away party in June 1970 is only two-thirds complete. Our family was getting ready to move from Pittsfield, Mass., to Fairfield, Conn., that summer. That diary gave me – a 12-year-old middle child – a place to be excited as well as miserable. Fifty-four years later (ack!), the diary is sitting on a shelf here in our home. I’ve been tempted to pitch it for years. Last night, I decided to take a look…
This is a real head-scratcher. Whose ring was this? The story starts back in the 1960s. I remember Mom coming into my bedroom and giving me a little white plastic box. She told me it was Grandpa Vayo‘s childhood ring and that he wanted me to have it. It was a beautiful ring. Although I treasured it, I don’t think I ever wore it. Fear of losing a family heirloom was high up on the list, plus the worry that…
“You’ll never guess what I found today!” It was the winter of 2021, when Dad spent nearly every afternoon going through the boxes in the attic. Mom had been gone a bit more than a year, and he felt it was time to see what they’d saved over their lifetime, both together and even before they met. “My baby book!” I had to laugh at the thought of it. He promised to tuck it away for me to see during…
I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like if social media was in full force back in the 1960s. More specifically, if The Beatles could have used the internet as they released each new album. Just the thought gives me a bit of a shiver … But that was then and this is now. And every time I hear or see the name of Taylor Swift’s new album: The Tortured Poets Department, I think about my poet…
In the last few days before today’s total solar eclipse, I couldn’t resist checking to see if Mom had ever written a poem about this all-too-rare occasion in nature. Sure enough, she had. But, as often as she wrote about the moon, that’s not what this poem from 1971 was about. Eclipse I saw two wagons passing by the sea:one full of letters from my love to me.The other held a cargo of such strange designthat I could only pray…