Family Squabbles

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Melissa Howden | 2 Comments

It’s no surprise that 2008’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winner for Best New Play was August: Osage County. The play, by Tracy Letts, is about a family engaged in emotional combat—putting the “dys” in function. As a Broadway production it’s entertainment, allowing the audience to be voyeurs into the fictional family’s dramatic horrors. Perhaps some appeal of the play also has to do with the recognition of our own family dynamics under the proscenium arch. Whichever it is, it’s much more satisfying to watch another family go through it than to be doing it oneself, as I am now.

Be it on stage or at home, the question is begged, “Just what does a ‘functional family’ look like, and is that the most fictional family of all?” Read more

Dear Mum

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Family | 6 Comments

A good friend’s mother died recently. I felt an immediate pang of sorrow for her, but in the days following the pang grew and deepened, and the feelings awoken by my friend’s loss have taken me into unexpected places.

My mother, who never once ventured outside England, died a few years ago. I had not lived in England for over 30 years, but ten months before her death I left the U.S. and returned “home.” I had no clear idea why I was returning. Read more

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Parenting, Prudence Baird | 11 Comments

“Tim must be doing very well!” I can almost hear my friend Sarah’s eyebrows hitting her hairline when I tell her my family is going to England and Scotland for a month this summer.

Yeah, this summer—when a cup of London Starbucks is ₤3, the equivalent of $6.

Even though Sarah didn’t exactly ask the question, she did beg it: Why on earth would a sane person, let alone a family of four, hop the pond now when the dollar is in the toilet and even the esteemed New York Times Travel section trumpets “Europe? It’s way too expensive!” Read more

I Eat My Peas With Honey…

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Family | 4 Comments

I Eat My Peas with Honey… good truth opportunity or bad idea?

I sort lots of stuff out in my head when cooking. This simple multitasking is not without the dangers of distraction. To quote a friend, “Who knew beef was so flammable?” Recently mashing potatoes started me thinking about those times when an opportunity act in truth appears more like an unwanted dilemma: Perfect shoes—in your size for a change—appear on the credit card radar just as you calculated your unsecured debt. Or an invite to join a new friend at yoga class and wanting to go, but do you really want this person to see you in need of medical assistance halfway through downward-facing dog? Read more

Father’s Day Musings

Filed Under All Posts, Carine Fabius, Family, Relationships | 3 Comments

My father is a very eccentric guy. At 84, he wears a ponytail, is extremely engaged in what might be termed “new-age” thinking, and he long ago gave up meat, alcohol and other favorite things as part of his personal spiritual quest. When my father develops an opinion on something, it’s because he’s spent long hours debating the thing with his intelligent, intellectually stimulated and very sharp mind; so, even though he loves long discussions on controversial positions, it’s easier to relocate the Grand Canyon than getting him to change his mind. Read more

Team Dad

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Group Posts, Melissa Howden, Relationships | 4 Comments

The summer I turned six my mother packed my younger brother and me into the car for a road trip. Just before we left I remember sitting in the backseat of the Karmann Ghia at 732 Jefferson (I’d learned our address in kindergarten.) From my vantage point I could only see my father from the waist down. From the front seat my mother would say something to my father. Then he’d walk back into the house and return with some item, which he handed through the window. As I remember, this went on several times with me watching his long legs go to and from the house. On the last trip he returned and handed the iron to my mother. And then we left. My father is a six foot five, so even as we drove down the street I could not see his face just his legs. Read more

Forgiven Hurts

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Group Posts, Prudence Baird | 2 Comments

“Didn’t you bring a different dad last year?”

My classmate Susie, trotting alongside me at the Linda Vista Elementary School Father-Daughter Day Picnic, had noticed. I was mortified—even though Bill, my surrogate dad, was young and buff, sitting straight in his saddle chatting with a real father.

Last year, I’d brought Curt; both he and Bill were firemen my mother had hired from the station across the street to accompany me to the annual event. My father wasn’t available; as usual, he was golfing. Read more

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