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Doing it Differently

Retired Columns

From “Life in the Sandwich” to “Special Needs Mama” to “Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance”—they’re all here for you to explore.

Practical Love

It was nearly a year and a half ago that Dave told me he was probably dying. I sat on the porch swing on my terrace, phone pressed to my…

Doing it Differently | February 2015 | By Ona Gritz


Don’t Mention It

Ethan knew the day our moving truck was coming. Friday, September 5, exactly two weeks after his own move to Penn State. We spoke that morning around 6 a.m. He…

Doing it Differently | December 2014 | By Ona Gritz


Empty Nest, Day One

When it came time to help Ethan through the college selection process, my ex and I took a divide-and-conquer approach. I flew with our boy to Ann Arbor for a…

Doing it Differently | October 2014 | By Ona Gritz


T-shirt Time Machine

In recent weeks, I’ve organized our photographs and cleaned out files, jewelry boxes, and the tool chest my dad dipped into whenever he did odd jobs around my apartment. I’ve…

Doing it Differently | July 2014 | By Ona Gritz


Common Ground

Like many moms, I spent countless hours of my son’s second and third year hunched before a snaking train track, acting out various conversations and conflicts between Thomas the Tank…

Doing it Differently | May 2014 | By Ona Gritz


What’s Turning in the World

“I made my first solo drive,” Ethan tells me on the phone. It’s evening and he’s at Richard’s apartment. Hours earlier, the two of them went to the DMV where…

Doing it Differently | March 2014 | By Ona Gritz


After All This Time

For Ethan’s second birthday we hung large sheets of black paper all through our large kitchen and provided our guests with buckets of chalk. We did this so none of…

Doing it Differently | January 2014 | By Ona Gritz


Handling the Rejection

“What fourteen-year-old doesn’t want to have dinner with her mother?” A woman named Lola bellows this in the teen area of the library where I work. “Do you see what…

Doing it Differently | October 2013 | By Ona Gritz


The Pause Button

Now that Ethan and I have all of one year together before he leaves for college, I’m grief-stricken once again over the brevity of this one-way trip. I’m also angry…

Doing it Differently | August 2013 | By Ona Gritz


The Price of Cool

It’s the night of Ethan’s junior prom and, weeks earlier, he’d volunteered me to sign the paperwork for the after-hours joyride he and ten of his friends have arranged for.…

Doing it Differently | June 2013 | By Ona Gritz


Too Many Children

I’ve been telling myself that I shouldn’t write about Newtown. That it’s not my story, not—kina hora—my tragedy. In the days after it happened, I even admonished myself for tearing…

Columns, Doing it Differently | February 2013 | By Ona Gritz


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