Today’s news that the entire 99c store chain will close struck a blow to my well-being. I have many, many happy memories that grew from my visits to their stores. The miniature roses blossoming both in the front of my house and the back came from there. True, I paid $3.99 for each one, but at the regular nursery, they
People often ask me where I get the ideas for my books. For me, it’s usually sparked by something in my life or the life of a friend or maybe someone in the news. The book I’m working on at the moment is the partly-fictional life story of my mother-in-law, Lena. She was a remarkable woman who lived an often
Most moms remember well when they were trying to toilet train their toddlers. The child in question discovered early on that the best way to gain their parent’s complete attention was to say the word, “potty.” Ah, yes. The magic word. Thrilled at the sound, Mom would jump up, lift said child into the air, go nose-to-nose with the utterer,
I have a half-dozen moments in my memory that are enormous– unforgettable. They’re the kind that come as a surprise and make you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. The first one is the murder of President Kennedy. My soldier husband was stationed at Ft. Riley. We were living in a small, basement apartment in Manhattan,
I only met my mother-in-law one time. From family descriptions, I knew she was once beautiful but in her sixties, she looked pretty much like most grandmothers. I was aware of the lifetime history of adventures and disasters that lived inside her and wondered if those travails were what had stolen her looks. At the time, my daughter Melanie was
I’m into it. When the kids were little, I dressed them up in home-made costumes. One year, Melanie was a Geisha, several years, a princess of some sort, a pilgrim. David was a clown, a bumblebee, and once, the wolfman. I cut up a wig and glued the hair to his hands and face. He hated it. I remember the