It’s your birthday. You’re 23. We’re getting old.
Posts under ‘Ties that bind...and gag’
Baby sister grows up
She’ll grow on you
My sister, Megan, and I are discussing our high school classmates. Turns out, almost everyone is married and/or has kids. Except us.
To my Abbydog:
Dear Abby,
A taste of home
They want a list before I get home. Since the last time I walked out the front door, my parents imagine I’ve been wasting away, barely sustaining myself on overpriced food void of any nutritional Crisco breading. The fanfare of my arrival commences with food. At the baggage carousel, my dad drops names - apricots, peaches, sour straws - of the goodies he’s procured just for me. The first question I’m asked, usually right in the middle of a hug, is, “Are you hungry?”
If only we could get my uncle in a shirt
Hours away from December, now is the perfect time to rent National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In case you’re wondering, I do have relatives much like Cousin Eddie. However, they prefer the more genteel word “crapper.”
Us past, present, and future
From Without A Map by Meredith Hall:
“The body does not tolerate foreign cells, which trigger illness and rejection. But a mother’s body incorporates into her own the cells of her children as if they recognize each other, belong to each other. This fantastic melding of two selves, mother and child, is called human microchimerism…
Family poetry
For years, other people’s grandparents will talk about Lichtenstein’s. It is the downtown department store - the only place to buy something nice enough for a wedding or a funeral - years before the strip malls bloom with their affordable chain stores. Lichtenstein’s is classy, but insulting. It sells furs to South Texans, which is not unlike selling cut-off shorts to a mountaineering team in the Alps.
My best friend years later
Shawna lived a few streets down from me when I was growing up. Other than the shared neighborhood, we lived really different lives. She was a latchkey kid, an only latchkey kid, which I occasionally envied. With my dad and sister always around, I never had the run of the house. Shawna had the kind of parents that believed things happen, people make mistakes, so there was no use being overprotective. The parent and child roles were more equal and fluid.
