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Posts Tagged ‘Family’

Tis the Season

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

We’ve had a noteworthy Spring so far in our family and friends network. Aside from the early arrival of our beautiful baby grand girls, there’s been a record number of graduations – the Pumpkin from lower school, one high school, two college alums and a law school! Congratulations to ALL the graduates out there. May our Grandson have smooth sailing in middle school and best of luck to everyone on their next chapter.

And remember, no matter where you start out, it’s the journey that counts.

My Father, a pharmacist from Scranton, PA, turned away from the family business of butchering to pursue an education in science. The Flapper told me his family never forgave him, and well, they also didn’t approve of her – a widowed, ex-dime-a-dance girl. His family was well established Irish; they came over early and made their money in cattle. The Flapper’s Mother, my Nana, was a domestic worker. I have a picture of my paternal grandmother looking quite formidable. All I know about her is she went to Mass every single day.

Excuse my nostalgia, but Bob has finally filled two legacy boxes with all our old paper pictures. We are on the cusp of entering the digital visual world! So I’ve spent the weekend going through lots of black and white photos. My foster parents kept an album of my baby pictures glued to thick, black paper and I can’t thank Bob enough for managing to free my childhood photos. It seems after reading the back of one photo, they actually entered me in a cute baby contest! I love the one of me pretending to read a newspaper, like Daddy Jim. He left school after 8th Grade to help support his family.

He was the most loving and nurturing father a child could ask for, I was lucky.

School pictures, my college graduation picture, my wedding pictures. The Flapper with Cab Calloway in MN. A picture of my sister Kay in a white coat next to one of the first ultrasound machines in NYC. Kay tells me that buried in her apartment is a 1958 graduation picture of her National Airlines stewardess class. My brother Dr Jim’s graduation from OCS in NC, before he went to Vietnam. The Flapper pinning his bars on his shoulder, my sister wearing her wings.

Journey joyfully and with alacrity, and always be ready to pivot. My Kindergarten picture.

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The Believable Lie

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Remember that movie with Jim Carey playing a lawyer where all of a sudden he couldn’t lie to save his life? It was hysterical. His facial expressions alone were comedy genius.

The Flapper could lie with impunity. One time she announced at the supper table that she’d made the dessert herself! I remember being dumbfounded because I knew she had bought the cake at a bakery that very morning. Mind you, my foster parents never lied and I was taught at Sacred Heart School that lying was a sin, which is why this moment of time is embedded in my brain.

I just sat there in the dining room on Orchard Street, my ten year old self trying to make sense of my first major moral contradiction. Of course I didn’t contradict her, children were taught to respect their elders. If I could talk to my ten year old self, I’d tell her to wait patiently because soon I would be moving in with the Flapper. I’d exchange my black and white, absolutist home for a home of many colors, religions and shades of grey.

I wonder how much longer the GOP can continue to buy into the fire-hose of lies from this President.

“Some of Trump’s 2025 false claims were about consequential policy matters, others about trivial personal fixations. Some were sophisticated distortions about obscure subjects, others obvious fictions about issues average Americans experience in their daily lives. Many were ad-libbed or posted on social media, but many were scripted into prepared remarks. Aside from the staggering frequency and the trademark brazenness, what stood out was how repetitive Trump’s lying was. Though he regularly sprinkled in some fresh deception, he deployed a core batch of favored falsehoods again and again – undeterred by the fact that many of these claims had been publicly debunked for months or even years.” https://www.cnn.com/politics/fact-check-trump-false-claims-debunked

“…trademark brazenness.” In fact the Washington Post fact checker chronicled 30,573 lies in his first term! Many were repeated over and over again on Fox news. Mr T has continued lying to the American people – more than a hundred times in his first hundred days this year. How we managed to elect this man is still a mystery to me.

One of my favorite authors, Anne Tyler, was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend. She said that in order to write fiction, one must be able to craft …“an extremely believable lie.” Which got me thinking, maybe that’s why I wanted to write non-fiction, because I knew I’d be no good at lying. But I can embellish a story like any good Irishwoman. And the Grands tell me I’m great at playing “One Night Ultimate Werewolf,” a card game of deceit where the object is to lie if you want to survive.

But if the Republicans want to survive as a party, they will have to stop lying to themselves. Because I’m pretty sure that most Republicans don’t actually believe Mr T’s lies. They just want to survive the next election cycle.

Hope your summer is off to a good start. It’s still wild weather here in Nashville, to be honest…

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Wild Weekend

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Do you get Mother’s day gifts? We’re a more experiential type of family – gardening, cooking togther, going to a play are all acceptable activities for this holiday in particular. I started the day on Zoom with my siblings and reminded them that i had two mothers; a warm, nurturing, demonstrative mother, and the Flapper. The yin and yang of unconditional love.

The Bride feted me with freshly baked sourdough bagels for breakfast. The Groom delivered scrumptious sandwiches for lunch even though he was on call in the MICU. And for dinner, we all piled into his car and traveled across town for a Mother’s Day celebration with our cousin Peg’s family that couldn’t be beat! It was also her son’s birthday. He was finishing up medical school and about to apply for a residency so we wanted to hear all the gory details! The weather cooperated with sunny blue skies and puffy clouds; “A good day to fly,” Bob said. Like a good pilot, I can expect to hear this several times a month.

It seems Mr T was given a 400 million dollar personal gift this weekend. It did not surprise me to hear that our President of Grift wants to accept a 747 plane from Qatar, even though this is obviously unconstitutional. “All of this would be worrisome to the White House except that, as I’ve written, Trump does not care about national security. “Trump is the only thing he’s interested in,” former National Security Adviser John Bolton told me earlier this year.” https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/05/trump-qatar-plane-gift/682785/

What bothers me most about our current president, besides his lack of empathy, is this transparency – his belief that he can get away with anything so why try to hide it. He pivots with impunity. He dares us to try and stop him in the courts, and if a judge opposes him, his sycophants send pizzas to their homes. Hundreds of unsolicited pizzas have been delivered to federal judges in seven states – a sick and dangerous threat that echoes the shooting of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl five years ago.

If that isn’t alarming, if it doesn’t look like we’re sliding into a kleptocracy, well you’re not paying attention. Remember Melania’s coat that read “I really don’t care, do you?” She wore that on her way to visit to an immigrant child detention center no less. I wonder how she celebrates Mother’s Day. This was part of her official post a few days ago on celebrating moms – “I urge you to prioritize your well-being. Nurture yourself, for your strength is the bedrock of a brighter future for our children…”

Happy to hear FLOTUS wants us to care for ourselves since this administration is dismantling many of our social safety nets and aggravating allies. But I had a Pinterest plan to bake a French strawberry cake for our cousin, which ended up being more like a cobbler unfortunately. On Saturday, we got up early and stood in line at the Farmer’s Market waiting for the cow bell to signal its opening – I didn’t want to miss out on the first strawberries of the season!

I should just accept defeat graciously and stick to baking muffins. This is the unwritten rule in our neighborhood; Les is the Queen of cakes and Kris is the Empress of rosemary bread. And our beautiful Bride, besides baking bagels, raised money for our TN neighbors’ legal representation after a soul deadening week of ICE agents marauding Nashville’s streets in masks. If you would like to help, please contact TN Justice for our Neighbors: https://www.tnjfon.org/

Remember that your grandchildren will ask you what you did during this time. This was us on Peg’s porch with her sons and her 92 year old MIL who had just flown in from California.

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Sprucing and Locking Up

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2025| 2 Comments »

When you’ve been away from home for awhile, things pile up; for instance, our car’s neural network failed. Granted it also didn’t want to start, and once jumped, our Subaru kept beeping and beeping its displeasure. Turns out, the back hatch has some locking system that needed adjusting. It was my first foray into the Nashville world and all I wanted was to go to the grocery store…alone. No “Do we need that?” in my ear.

But then, my NPR radio station changed on the dashboard monitor, as if possessed. I changed it back. It changed again. So I switched to the map. The image of my street zoomed out to include the Gulf of Mexico! After saying a small thank god in my head that it was still the gulf of Mexico, I realized there was a strange feedback loop happening in the upper right corner. My car was losing its mind, and so was I. It was the most frustrating trip, so of course I called Bob to complain.

“Call Bob mobile!” I said, as I pressed the little ear/speech ativated button on the steering wheel that is connected via Bluetooth to my phone.

“Cancelling,” my car spoke back.

I won’t repeat what I said after that. Today while I’m writing, Bob is at the dealership getting this fixed. Turns out it was a manufacturing glitch for two years that included our 2018 model, and since we have tariffs to look forward to, we’re putting off purchasing another car. What we couldn’t put off was a new heating system for our house.

Right before we left for California, we were informed that we should not use our heat since we would have a carbon monoxide leak! Now this would not be an easy, or an inexpensive fix. This past week, we had a whole new HVAC system installed which included replacing possum damaged ductwork in a crawlspace sized for a Lilliputian. Needless to say, the Rheem unit outside my snug is quiet and much more efficient.

Remember back in February since the twins came early, on my first morning alone in LA, I heard a loudspeaker in the street telling people they didn’t have to open their doors to ICE agents? I can recall that surreal feeling so vividly since this weekend TN state troopers and ICE agents raided South Nashville and sent buses containing people who have no due process to a prison facility in Louisiana. I thought Nashville was a sanctuary city! I wanted to scream; he was doing it again, separating families. THIS IS HAPPENING HERE.

Mr T’s agenda is pure malicious evil. Our Mayor Freddie O”Connell clarified:

“While O’Connell cannot institute official sanctuary policies, the mayor announced a partnership with the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to assist the families of those detained. The newly minted Belonging Fund will go towards emergency assistance for childcare, housing instability, transportation and other needs. “’Belonging is more than a feeling — it’s a sign of safety, stability, and community,” said Hal Cato, CEO of CFMT. “When immigrant families face a crisis, we want to ensure they’re not alone. This fund helps organizations on the ground respond quickly, compassionately, and effectively.’” https://www.nashville.gov/departments/mayor/news/belonging-fund-launches-provide-emergency-support-immigrants-nashville

BUT it does NOT pay for legal fees!! Why? In retrospect, my car, our home heating problems are minor compared to this administration. If you know, or would like to start a GoFundMe for legal representation for a family in crisis please comment below.

I’m so glad to see my son has continued playing guitar for his girls. Hearing from my sweet California family melts my heart and brings me peace.

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Plus ca Change

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 1, 2025| 2 Comments »

The more things change, the less I like it.

But I am not like my Nana, who refused to give up her “ice box” for a newfangled refrigerator. When the ice man stopped delivering, she reluctantly accepted the new contraption with a round condenser sitting like a pill box hat on top. It’s ironic that it was my sister Kay who had the Frigidaire delivered to our Nana, but later refused a microwave from me!

Today it’s more complicated. It’s not as if I’d like to return to the days when a milkman came to our little house in Victory Gardens… or my Daddy Jim had to climb up on the roof to adjust the TV antenna. But milk IS the driving force of our lives now that the twins are home! The Rocker had to install a small freezer in the garage for the overflow of breast milk Aunt Kiki is delivering. It’s actually Amazonian.

The Flapper told me very little about our lives before that Year of Living Dangerously. But I did know that her doctor took her aside one day and told her she didn’t have to sanitize my baby bottles – which meant in 1948 she didn’t need to boil them. The doctor knew my Father was dying of a brain tumor in the dining room of our home, and he figured she had enough to worry about, what with three other children in the house.

And so when the Bride was born, the Flapper helped me in many ways but she knew next to nothing about breastfeeding. Ditto for Grandma Ada. Their generation was expected to bottle feed, only poor women who couldn’t afford formula would nurse. And yet, the culture changed so dramatically by the 70s – we women read “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” we had consciousness raising groups, we had Gloria Steinem!

And the La Leche League of course. It was considered a badge of honor to nurse your baby anywhere and everywhere. And like most things, we went too far. I suffered through the flu and a mastitis and kept on going, determined to make a success of it. When in fact, training your baby to take a bottle along with nursing makes sense for your family’s sanity.

Especially with TWINS!

My son and his wife had a crash course on caring for preemies in the NICU. They had a lactation specialist and an occupational therapist! Best of all were the nurses, who each shared the tricks of their trade; including the last night nurse who hugged me and said I looked like a mystery writer!

So now I am my Mother, knowing very little about bottles. The baby girls are excellent nursers, but the bottles at first were not getting the job done in the NICU. And Kiki came up with the idea to change the bottles from one brand to another, and voila! They started meeting their “shift minimums.” So yesterday, we brought the girls home to meet Leo the Protector and his two resident cats.

Bob and I will stick around to help in any way we can. Ive learned how to defrost breastmilk and use the new bottles and their special cleaning appliance. The rest is like riding a bike, right? I hope they got some sleep last night.

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Lockdown

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on March 25, 2025| 4 Comments »

Last weekend my stepbrother Eric and his wife Bev, from St Louis, were visiting their daughter’s family here in California. We have a history of missed opportunities to see each other whenever we overlap on the West Coast but this time I was determined to make it happen. We made a reservation at a French restaurant near the hospital, we would sit out on the terrace to avoid germs.

Then this happened:

Aunt Kiki and I left Bob and our son in the hospital’s cafeteria – they were headed into the Starbucks cafe near the gift shop while we wanted to get back to the NICU. Only when we got to the locked door leading into the maternity ward, a spot where I would pick up the wall mounted phone and announce myself and the name of the babies I was visiting, we met an armed policewoman.

She said the hospital was on LOCKDOWN and we couldn’t get back into the NICU and we couldn’t go outside! We made her say it again.

All of a sudden a fairy godmother holding her dinner plate looked at us and said, “She’s one of our mothers, follow me!” It was the NICU charge nurse sweeping us through maternity’s locked doors and into the nursery where we learned there’d been an incident in the ER. I asked our fairy/nurse if this was a drill, she said no. Kiki quickly texted the Rocker to tell him he should abandon his coffee run and meet us in the NICU pronto.

Without knowing anything – was there an armed shooter in the building, had a car crashed into the ER, or was the next plague contained behind locked doors – we settled into our little room with the twins. I told Kiki we were in the safest place imaginable, behind multiple layers of security. The Rocker texted back he heard helicopters outside while Bob was using his doctor bona fides to reach us.

We were the only visitors in our “twin room.” At one time we had three sets of twins with three nurses each but on that day we were down to two sets and the remaining two nurses were trying to put us at ease. “There’s plenty of breast milk to keep us hydrated,” one said. The baby girls slept peacefully all swaddled up in their bassinets and I hugged Kiki. The boys arrived.

For over three hours it was business as usual, kind of – Kiki was nursing the twins and I was tentatively texting with Bev. They were at the restaurant holding our table and enjoying some French onion soup. We learned that someone had left the ER unhappy with their treatment, threatening to return and, “Shoot up the place.” The LAPD were looking for him (I’m assuming their gender) and until he was arrested we were held captive, obliged to miss yet another attempt to see Eric and Bev!

Once the threat was over and we were driving back to our AirBnB, I was slowly aware of my suppressed rage. When Bob worked in a hospital, there were no metal detectors. Today we must present our drivers license, stand in front of a camera and have a badge made every day we visit the twins. Every baby has some sort of security band on their foot. And yet

These babies, my brand new grandbabies, have already experienced their first distinctly American terrorist threat… their first active shooter drill. They were not even a month old. Even if this disgruntled patient was at home having his dinner, we were watching the NICU door, listening for gunfire. I was terrified. He was arrested, we got the all clear and picked up dinner – cookies – from the hospital’s vending machine.

But do I want my grandchildren to grow up in a country with 125 guns for every 100 people? Here is a screen shot of that night.

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Work Life Balance

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on March 18, 2025| 6 Comments »

Another week, another day of physical therapy. I’m working hard to not only turn my head, but bend it at an angle so I can look into the eyes of my brand new grandbabies. That is the goal. That and not falling, so I’m working on balance exercises too. Isometrics is also part of the plan.

And once a week, I’m tuning into Apple TV to watch “Severance.”

If you’re not a fan, Severance is a series about people who are suffering so much in their personal lives, they undergo a surgical procedure on their brains so that they are entirely different people in their work life. At home they are “outies,” and at work they are “innies.” Their memories are kaput!

The series was shot at Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ. Long white corridors leading to strange rooms punctuate the dystopian landscape. Its four main characters have no work life balance; instead they have two different identities.

Whenever I heard anyone talk about work life balance, I felt it was code for a more traditional, sexist point of view. After all, men never uttered those words when I was joining the work force in the 70s. Their work was their life. But for women, well we were expected to look like a Virginia Slims ad – a baby on one hip and a briefcase in the other hand.

We could bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan!

Things haven’t changed much since then. American women still shoulder much more of the housekeeping and child rearing. As the Bride likes to point out, our country is the ONLY G7 country that doesn’t offer PARENTAL leave after the birth of a baby for six months to a year! We also abandon our new parents to a for-profit childcare system that can eat up half their income.

My son has his studio at home, and Aunt Kiki has a pretty flexible designer’s schedule where she can work from home as needed. But still, having twins will require an open-door policy at their house! Getting those babies home and on the same schedule is the order of the day. They are fast approaching six pounds!

While the only severed woman, or should I say women, on Severance is Helly R aka Helena Eagan, and the only baby is outie Mark’s niece, the science fiction series is a welcome relief from the actual cesspool of MAGA policies that have been littering our news outlets. Like DOGE people bringing armed ‘Marshalls’ into government agencies – I wonder if they were wearing brown shirts.

Breaking news. I’ve graduated to two pound hand weights and my goal is six plus. My work is all about balance.

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Love is Blind, and also dumb

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on March 11, 2025| 1 Comment »

Last night my son decided to take his dog to the dog park.

The Rocker and Aunt Kiki have two cats and a very good dog named Leo. They know that their fur babies will be in for a rude awakening when the twins come home, so they’ve been trying to give them a little extra attention. They bring home baby blankets from the NICU to smell, and we give them special treats. Since I was tired, I parked myself in front of a Bravo reality show while Kiki pumped.

The only reality show I’ve ever watched was the first incarnation of Real Housewives. Wait, I may have watched an Apprentice or two. Isn’t it strange that two previous reality show stars are battling on the world stage?

When the Bride started nursing the Love Bug in Nashville we watched Downton Abbey on PBS. That was almost 13 years ago, there was no streaming.

I’m not sure why “Love is Blind” was the main attraction last night, but I fell right into its spell. I get why we might crave mind-numbing TV right now, who wants to hear about the latest orange julius meltdown? The market is sliding downhill and Kennedy thinks the measles is due to a poor diet. What else is new?

Anyway, a guy and a gal meet and talk behind a wall. It’s like Cyrano, only without the intermediary and the beautiful language. You only get to meet your actual person once you’ve decided to marry them! And I just happened to watch the episode where a nice white woman asks a white guy what he thinks about Black Lives Matter.

She should have run the other way. Instead she thought he might evolve. He told her he never gave BLM much thought. Ladies, listen to your intuition- it seems these two made it all the way to the altar before she backed out. Oh the drama.

So the question is, can a Republican marry a Democrat? What would be the deal breaker? A long time ago I sang “Marry the Man Today and Change His Ways Tomorrow.” It’s still a pretty funny premise.

I’m holding Baby A, and telling her boys can be tricky.


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Moving Day

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on March 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

We moved over the weekend to a new AirBnB.

The first place was a last minute booking because our new grandbabies couldn’t wait to arrive earthside. This spot with a garden was the original plan; two bedrooms in a quaint carriage house within walking distance of shops and cafes. I settled right in and made sweet potato lentil soup for the new parents. We’re only a little over a mile away from the hospital where the twins are thriving and growing stronger each day. They will be moving home soon enough, best friends for life.

But did you know that once upon a time people packed up all their belongings and moved every year? I happened to bring Atlantic magazine’s March issue with me for the plane, and I was intrigued by Yoni Appelbaum’s essay, “Stuck in Place.”

”The great holiday of American society at its most nomadic was Moving Day, observed by renters and landlords throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th with a giant game of musical houses. Moving Day was a festival of new hopes and new beginnings of shattered dreams and shattered crockery – quite as recognized a day as Christmas or the Fouth of July!”

Of course I played musical houses growing up between Nell in Victory Gardens, and the Flapper in Scranton. All my memories are glued to a dilapidated leather album – dressed up for Easter, hiding between appliances in the kitchen, sitting on the hood of an old car in a frilly bathing suit. And there’s my favorite, I’m about five years old and posed like Shirley Temple in front of a poster at the circus. I was wearing a pair of oxfords, my “circus shoes.”

I’ve been blissfully unaware of the political circus happening all around us at breakneck speed. My priority is moving between this carriage house and the hospital, supporting the new parents as best I can, and beginning a course of physical therapy. Balance and equilibrium are the order of the day.

And so we’re off on a hunt for a small freezer to store breast milk for two babies. I cannot wait to move them into their new nursery.

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Party Planning

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Bob and I have been known to throw a good party over the years. We’ve done a clambake in our Jersey Shore backyard, we did Bob’s infamous 40th “Come as You Were in the 60s” birthday bash, and of course the post-flood homecoming in Rumson, not to mention the Big Chill Thanksgivings and numerous Grandma Ada birthday parties – and the 2000 Millennial New Year’s Eve. There’s nothing I love better than cooking for a crowd, well maybe catering…

I had to laugh when I overheard one political commentator say, “The Democrats have to throw the kind of party you want to go to.” A light went off in my head!

Of course, we don’t want to be all doom and gloom. But I also don’t do raves either, luckily that trend has skipped my generation. Still, turn on Fox News and their anchors are actually having questionable fun. I don’t stay on Fox for long, but everyone is sitting around telling jokes, instead of stating facts or analyzing policy. They are not worried about the end of democracy while their president and his oligarch, tech-bro, side-kick go about trampling everything in their path like two giant Gullivers run amok.

So what kind of party would you want to attend? I hear that Rubrik’s Cube parties are all the rage in Paris. I’m not quite sure how you play, but wearing articles of clothing in the cube’s colors is de rigeur. Or what about a Knives Out mystery party? Maybe we should leave weapons out of the equation. An escape room? I’d love to escape reality, forget this past year, a year of nearly dying from a simple fall that happened the day before our election.

Well, both splints are off my hands and the Aspen collar has been packed away. I look perfectly normal, if not shorter, but that is an illusion. I’m tempered. I’ve had to face mortality and my head still feels like a bowling ball. My right hand doesn’t work the way it used to, but then again, pretty much nothing else does either. Ah, to be seventy again!

Let’s plan on throwing a party for the Dems. Let’s brainstorm all the things we want to happen, like getting egg prices down, controlling bird flu, and not whether or not to buy Greenland. Let’s talk about the positive things we can do to help the climate, and help families with childcare. We need to make our party fun again and build community.

We need to party like it’s 1999! And Happy Anniversary to these two!

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