Phonics

After that first brief image, looking at the light under the door and listening to my mother’s voice, the memories of childhood come in indistinguishable order. We moved once, when I was 10 or so, and everything I remember is divided into the old house and the new house.

The Beginning

Blogging started for me as a venue for writing a memoir, of sorts. I’ve spent more time lately on other things, but the memoir is still important to me. So, here is how it starts.

18,250 Days

So I took a few days off to celebrate — well, celebrate isn’t the right word — to observe a milestone in my life. I have now officially been alive for a full half of a century. Five long decades. Fifty years, blowing past me in a blink of an eye, it seems.

That’s right, time seems to fly by, and yet when I look back over all that’s happened, it’s amazing I could fit it into just fifty years. Not that I’ve had such noteworthy adventures or anything, but, that’s a lot of days.

Christmas

Someone kindly told me they enjoyed my Thanksgiving post, and asked if I was going to write any Christmas reminiscences. I’ve been thinking about that, and for some reason it’s much more difficult. Because Christmas itself is kind of difficult.

The expectations for Christmas are so much higher, and the scope so much larger. Thanksgiving is one big dinner, followed by a long weekend. Christmas requires cards, presents, parties, decorations, and at least one big meal, and it is as often as not followed by going to work the next day. Add to that the timing — the last few days of the calendar year are a busy time in many workplaces — and you have a lot of pressure. I think if I had to pick a favorite day of the year, I would have to pick December 26.

John Lennon

So tonight, I just hit Play, and John Lennon happened to be in the CD player. And I fell even more in love with him than ever. I know this sort of thing is supposed to happen when you are a teenager, but back then I wasn’t allowed to listen to rock and roll, and I really didn’t discover Lennon until shortly before his death — which I remember like it was yesterday.

Elaine

It has been almost a year since my mother-in-law passed away. I spent some time this weekend talking with two of her sons about life, and their mom, and their first Christmas without her. In honor of all that, I decided to repost another item from the old blog, about my last visit with her.

For someone who was as difficult and aggravating as she could often be — it’s been surprising how much I’ve missed her.

Thanksgiving

What with all the turkey roasting and pie baking, I didn’t have time to write anything new. So, with apologies to those of you who’ve been following for a while, here is an updated version of last Thanksgiving’s post.

All of this has happened before…

I’m in a pretty good mood tonight. Maybe that’s why it seems like a good time to post something that I actually wrote a few months ago in a fit (not uncommon) of melancholy. The thing is, melancholy isn’t that bad, really. Sometimes, it hurts in sort of a good way

Centennial

I decided to edit some of the posts from my old blog and copy them over here, as I have time (or run out of things to write about, as the case may be.) For readers who have been good enough to follow me through this transition, I’ll make sure to note which posts are repeats so you can skip them. Or, you can tell me whether my editing has made them any better.

Since this month, my Aunt Margaret would have been 100 years old, it seemed right to start with her story. This was originally in three parts, so it’s a bit long, but it’s tough to sum up an amazing 96 year life too briefly.

On Pain, and Competition

The last few days I’ve been catching up on reading blogs more than on writing my own. Several of the blogs that I follow are related to adoption. I’ve learned over the years that my experiences as an adoptee were not so unusual as I had thought, and many adoptees have had it much worse.

But here is the thing that strikes me tonight about some of these stories.