Month: November 1993

  • Many cooks make the holiday

    Our oldest stayed in New Orleans and shared Thanksgiving with friends. I didn’t like his being away, but as my mother used to say, “It’s all part of a parent’s growing up.” I decided to not start cooking in the pre-dawn hours. I slept in. I read the paper, cleaned house and laid the tablecloth.…

  • Thank you!

    The best thank you I ever received came from one of my sons when he was about five years-old. At a garage sale, under a table of slightly worn clothes I saw a perfectly good pair of child-size cowboy boots. No price tag. It was late in the day. I turned to the seller, “How…

  • looking at cars differently

    When I’m driving, I tend to entertain myself by reading passing road markers, advertisements, anything with letters, number or words, but especially license plates. I play games with the numbers, I figure the prime factors, arrange the numbers chronologically and add or subtract one part of the number from the other. Sometimes I substitute letters…

  • Surprises by the children

    We were visiting my parents. The older children were out with “the men,” but my toddler played around the couch as I washed the morning dishes in my bare feet. The morning clutter cleared away, my mother and I prepared to talk. My mom tipped back her lounge chair. As I propped my bar feet…

  • Hazardous Halloween candy

    I’m glad Halloween is over for another year. Not because of the trick-or-treaters, I love the puzzled looks on the toddlers faces, the older ones’ expectant grins and the escorts who feign disinterest even as they take a treat. I like passing out gifts to so many for so little. I enjoy watching that half-blind…