Have you ever felt a sense of grace while going through a really hard time? Have you found something to smile or chuckle about through your tears of grief? Mom called this “a sense of holy laughter” in a recorded interview, below. She was referencing how she and her siblings managed to laugh as they stepped cautiously through the final weeks of their father’s life in the spring of 1982. A sense of holy laughter. Grandpa loved a good laugh….
Forget for a moment that we’re just weeks away from a presidential election. Soak in this far more important news: They’ve pulled the plug on TaB! Shocking as that may seem, no doubt many of us are going all Aunt Ethel (from the classic movie and play Harvey): What? I thought they killed off that swill decades ago! Well, they should have. That stuff was nasty! Medicinal. Metallic. Sweetened with Saccharin. But back in the ’60s, it was all we…
The year was 1944. Dad’s family had just moved to Chatham Street in New Haven, Connecticut. He was not quite 14, and already hungry to earn some money. Before long, he had a job as a paperboy. The Morning Journal and Courier had been around since 1848. As indicated by its name, it was the morning paper, so Dad had to roll out of bed early – about 5:30am – six days a week, no matter what the weather. With…
There comes a time in every mother’s life when she simply has to put her foot down. Dad recalls the first time Mom did this. It was in the mid-1960s, we were living in Pittsfield, and there was too much cussin’ going on in our house. “Mom got on my case,” he remembers. I asked Dad, “So what was it, mostly ‘hell’ and ‘damn’?” ” … bastard, too.” The response came much sooner than I would have expected. For those…
Let me just start by saying even Gary, my husband, likes this recipe. I’ve made Fish Florentine since we were newlyweds, and that was a long time ago! Here is the quick and easy recipe, which works for keto menus, using sole or orange roughy. Fish Florentine 4 fillets of sole or orange roughy (up to 1/3 pound each)2 Tbsp. olive oil1/4 – 1/2 cup chopped onion1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheeseSalt and pepper to taste10 oz. frozen spinach (defrost, then…
When I pulled out this month’s volume by Graham Greene, I nearly put it back. Weeks before this highly contentious federal election, did I really need to read The Ministry of Fear? Well, at least it was a book of fiction. The other three September books were non-fiction, and just as scary. Week 1: Disloyal by Michael Cohen When news hit that Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer was working on a memoir, I wondered how deep the confession would go….
As a young girl, Mom had a pen pal, her Aunt Margaret Regan. Known to non-family members as Sister Amabilis, she was only 16 when she entered religious life. It was September 1943 and Mom was 13 when she wrote this to her aunt, who wasn’t permitted to visit her family very often. It was September 1943; her older second-cousin Eddie was on furlough from the Army during World War II. Eddie wrote on the back of the photo, “Quit…
Dad – who is this? Do you recognize her? We were going through old black-and-white photos yet again. Dad‘s voice softened, “Oh yes, that’s my Aunt Alice. She was so soft and cuddly. A good hugger.” Alice Plante was one of my paternal grandma‘s younger sisters. Ten years younger, to be exact. As I ticked off the names of the nine Plante siblings from our Ancestry family tree, Dad did the math. What an accomplishment for his grandma; she kept…
YOU! Close the door and lock it. Class begins on time. No latecomers! It was the first day of class. My final college class. And the professor was a madman. A MAD man, actually. Fred Brewer eventually told us he was a former editor of MAD Magazine, the irreverent comic-book-style periodical. He’d served as editor of the British edition. But this was Indiana University in June of 1980, my senior year. All I had left before leaving campus was one…
Today is the last day of summer. The temperatures have already cooled and the fields are ready for harvest. My darling tomato-picker has been busy all summer: Cameron wasn’t sure he’d like the taste of a grape tomato, but sampled a few each time he visited us this summer. He’s still not sure. When Gary and I went to spend some time with Dad in Connecticut earlier this month (quarantining all the while, as per the Nutmeg State‘s Covid rules),…