Staying silent might be a problem
Have you ever watched a movie or sitcom in which someone has a loud, emotional outburst in a noisy and crowded restaurant, and then suddenly realizes everyone in the entire place has gotten silent and is staring at him? Or one in which someone is alone, having a lively conversation with himself while engrossed in some mundane chore, and then he looks up to find a room full of people watching and listening to him? Or worse, he sees only [...]
Celebrate the New Year – in July
Happy New Year! No, I haven’t gotten my national holidays confused. And yes, I realize we just finished celebrating the 4th of July. But in some ways, July always feels to me like the start of a new year. It probably has something to do with two “perpetual calendars” I use every day. One is a flip calendar that includes “A Year of Daily Wisdom.” I keep it on an end table in our family room, and enjoy reading each [...]
Then and now, there’s no place like home
My kids were 15 and 13 when I first began writing my column in the Villager. At that time, the name and the theme of my column was “No Place Like Home,” and I thought of it pretty much as a “Mom” column. Hearth and home was my headquarters, and family events and activities – my family’s, and those of families in general – were my main topics. At that time, whenever I wrote about my kids – my husband, [...]
Anything can happen if you’re open to the possibilities
“Anything can happen if you let it.” There are a few different ways you could interpret that. One is as a cautionary warning, a reminder to set firm limits and boundaries, and to stay disciplined, focused, and attentive. Because if you’re not, if you loosen up a bit or get a little careless, you never know what awful things might occur. I prefer to take it in the other direction, however – the one in which you wander and explore. [...]
Hit the jackpot by looking inside
Imagine that you buy a lottery ticket every week, and that one day you hit the jackpot and win fifty million dollars. But you never cash in, and the windfall doesn’t do you any good. Why? Because you never check the numbers, you just keep on buying tickets. I read a blog post recently that used a slight variation of this as an analogy, and the first thing I did was shake my head, chuckling and rolling my eyes at [...]
A current photo brings back fond memories
I was flipping through the pages of last Sunday’s newspaper when something caught my eye. It was a photo of a toddler sitting on a sofa, kissing the forehead of his baby sister, who was seated in his lap. The young boy was two-year-old Prince George of England, and the baby was his newborn sister, Princess Charlotte. The photo was taken by their mother. The reason the photo grabbed my attention was not because it was such an adorable picture [...]