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The family columnist
“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.” ~Stacia Tauscher Using our kids as fodder for Facebook, Instagram, or blog posts is hardly new. Rare are the parents (or grandparents) who don’t share adorable photos of their kids and celebrate their latest achievements online. Before social media took over, I wrote a family column for our local newspapers. Since I was a work-at-home mom, my Sunday column topics often included details about my school-aged son. So it was a thought-provoking exercise for me to revisit those column-writing days in an essay I wrote a few years ago for The Christian Science…
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Emotional baggage or timeless treasure?
“If a gift has come to you wrapped in obligations and tied tightly with a ribbon of guilt, then it’s not really a gift at all.” ~Peter Walsh, professional organizer Organizing an estate sale is probably one of the toughest things we have to do after our parents die. If your folks collected as many family heirlooms as mine did, you’ll face the emotionally loaded task of deciding which items to keep and which ones to sell or give away. And what happens when your grown kids don’t want to inherit the family treasures? For starters, it helps to learn and understand the generational differences in what we value. My…
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Springtime surprises
It doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, but sometimes my work gets published in a magazine without much effort on my part. Late last year, for instance, I received an unexpected letter and a contract from an editor at Ideals magazine, requesting my permission to reprint an Easter essay from my book, Writing Home. This week, I received my advance copies of Ideals Springtime 2018. My essay in this issue is about a surprise gift (a box of ducklings) that I received one Easter when I was a kid. Ideals is a soft-cover anthology of stories and poems by a variety of nationally published authors. Owned by Guideposts and…
