When nights are cold and clear and the moon is waning, stars appear against the blackness like dots on my Light Bright when my baby brother got hold of it. One glance away from the brightest star are numberless smaller points of light. The longer you look, the more you see. I’ve never studied the …
The When That Never Came
I remember my first Christmas married and before kids, my husband and I had big dreams for the future and very little money. We were both in school and working part time. I was an undergraduate in Accounting and he was in his second year of medical school. I worked as a teller at a …
A Mother’s Heart
My Gift - Artwork by Elisabeth Crocker with a little help from her mom Our kids made our hearts skip a beat when they shared their news that they’re expecting and we’d be grandparents, but their “don’t tell anyone yet because we want to announce it” left us anxious to celebrate and worried that we’d …
Ice Cream For Breakfast
Thanksgiving means huge meals with all the family favorites, which unfortunately don’t come with labels. Potluck, for me this year, is like playing Russian Roulette with my insides! Since my cancer surgeries this past summer, my digestive system has been a little quirky. Suffice it to say, I’ve become aware of things that are necessary …
Selling Out
It’s a seller’s market out there! When my daughter and her husband learned that his medical training would continue in North Carolina this spring, they immediately began looking for housing. A new listing would appear and before they could contact their agent, the property was under contract. With barely enough time to close before their …
Habit in the Making
Did you brush your teeth? Yes ma’am. Are you sure? Feel my toothbrush. This was my kids’ favorite argument at bedtime. Well, at least it was a close second to “just one more story!” It took some training and persistence to teach my children to be responsible for brushing their own teeth, and perseverance to …
Who Does He Look Like?
My husband was enrolled in Genetics, the study of inherited characteristics, in medical school when we started making plans for a family. We spent our evenings talking about dominant and recessive traits and which we possessed and would likely be passed on to our children. No amount of imagining could have prepared us for the …
Defining Moments
Becoming a grandmother has quickly become one of those moments in life that changes everything! I’ve spent months preparing for it and thinking about it and still it seems surreal. I’ve looked forward to our grandson’s arrival since a few weeks after his conception, but until I held him in my arms, I didn’t really …
Upheld
Baby’s First Bath Being a new mother is tough. I knew it well at one point (actually at three separate points) but over time I’ve forgotten. It’s amazing how memory has washed away the monotonous unpleasantness, leaving me with rose-colored snippets of raising my own children. I’ve had the immense privilege of walking with my …
Five Generations Blessed
My Granny will be ninety in October of this year, and she was able to hold her first great-great-grandchild earlier this week. I was the first grandchild of my maternal grandparents. When I was born, five generations of my mom’s family were living. Now that my daughter has a child, we have five generations again. …
A Fitting Reply 