Life in the Sandwich

Having housemates reminds me of the times that we’ve opened our home in the past — various friends, a few relatives (niece and cousin), and once an entire extended family…

So here it is. She’s going to have a place called “home” thousands of miles from where her family lives.

To build a set of traditions can be a joyful thing, but to dismantle them can be heartbreaking. And yet some shifting and evolving of tradition is necessary as children…

It’s been an amazing journey, this learning to live without our newly adult daughter who just voted in her first election, two thousand miles away.

I don’t want to be pregnant again. I don’t want any more babies, or toddlers, or preschoolers, or even young school aged children. My dream was to adopt teenagers. Yes,…

I dreaded this last month, felt that our connection would just snap irrevocably, and she would drift away into her life like a bear cub on an ice floe.

I could hear the pages turning and then his inhalation: “Here….” Slowly, he read the words of Martin Luther King, one of his more obscure sermons. His voice cracked open…

The rub is, of course, that you can read all you want, but nothing fully prepares you. You don’t know what it’s really like to parent, until that baby is…

She used to be at the center of our family, running things, shopping, driving around, hosting large holiday parties with dozens of relatives. Those days are now the Ghost of…

My fingers hover over the “Find out more” button…. I don’t know what lies ahead. I don’t know if we’ll ever have more than two daughters, or if we’ll live…

And then it was over. I didn’t cry like I thought I might, but when the last girl went home and the helium-filled balloons started drooping, I sighed too. Seventeen…