Only When I Laugh

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Family, Parenting, Relationships | 7 Comments

For Christie Healey, time spent with relatives is just the ticket.

Many of us have recently spent time with our families over the holidays. Family has taken on a very broad meaning and I am blessed with a wonderful family of choice. But, for now I want to reflect upon those persons in our family that we had no choice of selection. Time spent with the relatives can be revealing, precious, stressful, hilarious, and restorative.

My former father-in-law comes to mind when I think of some of the adjectives I used above. He is an extraordinary person, a man of great persistence in certain areas. He loved golf. No, I mean he really loved golf. Practiced for over 50 years with no noticeable signs of improvement. He would swing a club in the apartment we shared whenever the obsession took over. Chips out of the concrete beam in the living room bear witness to his fervour. After some pleas, he agreed to use the “air” practice swing. One evening he was found lying on the floor in the bedroom. “What happened?” we cried. “I was going for distance,” he responded. Read more

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Humor, Prudence Baird | 10 Comments

After 15 years of marriage, and too many misplaced items to count, Prudence Baird insists her husband consider a new approach.

When I say I married a loser, I don’t mean that kind of loser. I’m talking about the kind of loser who loses things. Like keys, hats, sunglasses, cell phones, parking lot tickets, wedding rings—and most of all, wallets.

Like the clueless wife who finds that her husband has a gambling problem only after the repo man takes away the family Volvo, I found out that (let’s call him “Tim”) was a misplacer (nicer word, huh?) after we married. The first time it happened, I had no idea that this was merely Point A in an ever-lengthening trajectory that would arc across the time grid of our marriage.

I was in my home office churning out press releases when I heard the front door slam and heavy, frantic steps on the staircase. I emerged to see a man I didn’t recognize—a red-faced man, his salt-and-pepper askew; a man who hollered in my face: “My wallet is gone!” Read more

Back to School

Filed Under All Posts, Environment, Family, Melissa Howden | 12 Comments

In the waning days of summer, Melissa Howden ponders the markers of time.

I heard on the radio today that here in Northern New Mexico we always know school will be starting when the sunflowers bloom. Sure enough the sunflowers are at their peak, and the school buses just started rolling.

As a child my seasons were pretty much “school” and “summer”. I happened to be a child who liked school, but I also loved summer. Now as an adult who does not have children, thus the markers of the beginning and the end of the school year—my seasons tend to mush together which in some ways I think creates the sensation of time speeding up.

I do find myself longing for more specific touchstones in the year. Recently I visited my niece and nephew. The days of my visit coincided the last days Emily’s summer. As a result I was gifted with some summer nostalgia as we lolled about in the swimming pool eating popsicles, and picked out new tennis shoes for school (in this case we designed high tops online). Emily went back and forth to the neighbors Slip n’ Slide and sleepovers, squeezing one in for each remaining day of the summer. But even as we slept in, and went for mani-pedis, the lazy days of summer were being squeezed out with the start of soccer practice and the posting of her class lists and teacher assignments coming hand-in-hand with the promise of early mornings, car pooling and homework. Read more

One Loyal Friend is Worth Ten Thousand Relatives


Filed Under All Posts, Connie Stetson, Family, Group Posts, Relationships | 15 Comments

Connie Stetson muses on friends and relations, relatively speaking.

Not to speak ill of relatives, of course, but Euripedes got that right. I’m grateful that my sister and have become good friends, and I’m glad I only have one sister to work my shit out with, but we never had a choice. It’s the combo-pack with family. For good or ill, with deeper issues to work out, old wounds to mend; we’re all so invested in the story we made up about when we were kids that it’s nearly impossible to show up as changed, or better, or over that, ya know?

Ah, but our friends… To be able to say to someone, “I absolutely support your change and growth, but you never have to change for me to love you.” Knowing that there are a select few out there who hear your truth and your inconsistencies, and you theirs, is a mighty, mighty force indeed. To allow a dear friend, in all loving honesty to say, “your ass looks like a giant bag of potatoes in those pants, take them off now!” To stand with a friend as she walks through loss, illness, change and all of the boundless joyful stuff too—well, this is what helps keeps me anchored. Read more

A Classy Lady

Filed Under All Posts, Carine Fabius, Family | 12 Comments

Carine Fabius takes a good look at the person behind the role of mom.

It was my father’s birthday recently, and when I called to wish him a happy birthday, he went into a long and detailed account of why he and my mother are so lucky at this time in their lives. It mostly had to do with the great bunch of kids they had. (My father loves to make long, dramatic speeches with well-timed pauses for effect, and this was no different.) As he talked, I kept thinking about how lucky we kids are to have such great parents. And since I once wrote on this site about my father, I’ve been thinking about the classy lady who gave me life. You should meet her sometime!

My mother is physically gorgeous; always has been. Her signature scent is “Le” de Givenchy. She makes great cocktails. She is political, vociferously so. She thinks Haitian Vodou is for the uneducated masses, but she believes in spirit entities and channeled communication. She can cook up a mean batch of rice and beans. She belongs to a gourmet club. She is generous, generous, generous. Read more

Distance

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Family, Relationships | 12 Comments

For Christie Healey, family is chosen and distance is a state of mind.

I have moved many times in my life. Perhaps the most significant was the move from my home village to London in the late Sixties. Looking back it seems that this tearing away from my family and the small world I had known for 17 years set me on the path of the wanderer. The wanderer becomes part of a very different family.

My family is now made up of those I left behind: a sister, two nephews, a great-niece and a great-nephew; a son born in the U.S. and friends I have made over the years. My son has taken up my wandering lifestyle. He now lives in Hawaii. I live in Minnesota.

I have close friends, old and new, in Minnesota, but the rest of my magically selected family live in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, New Mexico and many other places. We come together whenever time and money permit, and sometimes when it doesn’t. Just because I need to see their faces, hear their voices and feel their presence wholly and completely. Read more

Here a Mother, There a Mother, Everywhere a Bit o’Mother

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Melissa Howden | 10 Comments

Melissa Howden finds new ways of acknowledging and remembering mom.

In the days preceding Mother’s Day my girlfriend and I were particularly sensitive to all of the Mother’s Day promotions: Mother’s Day bouquets, special brunches at our favorite restaurant, and numerous grocery store displays. We took to saying to each other half jokingly, “We ain’t got no mothers!” My mother died nine years ago and my girlfriend’s mother died two years ago. So while we were both making some light of our “motherlessness” in the face of an advertising onslaught, there was no denying the presence of our mother memories.

It occurred to me that while I was saying I didn’t have a mother, I in fact did have my mother, in two containers; one in the care of a friend in California and a smaller one here with me in New Mexico. My mother knew she was dying. As such she had time to prepare, paying in advance for her own cremation and for the distribution of her ashes off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Read more

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