my favorite handwritten letters involved little punctuation no capital letters run on sentences and often ill formed alphabet letters they were puzzles filled with daily life food recipes family and love my favorite letters were written by an elementary school dropout who was pulled from school to care for her father and her siblings after… Continue reading Dorothy

He would be 97 years old today. My father. He was a good dad to me. I say ‘to me’ because each of us experiences a parent differently. I’ve learned this as I’ve gotten older, both from the view of the child and the view of the parent. As the fourth kid and the second… Continue reading A swell guy

Some days pass as perfect as one could hope for and yet they go unnoticed and unrecognized. It seems like just yesterday, our children, cousins, would run wild under our radar on holidays. Children have a way of navigating the world on a level just below their parents - communicating, playing, growing - all on… Continue reading As perfect as one could hope for…

My mother and my aunt were as different as the decade of life between them. But when they were together, the laughter rang through the house, the coffee flowed freely, and love filled the air. It is that laughter that I miss on Thanksgiving. Their simple joy in being together and sharing their families was… Continue reading Giving thanks

Mental illness winds its way through my family tree just as poison ivy vines wrap their roots through the woods, without regard for beauty, for grace, for longevity, intelligence, humor or physical health, sometimes shadowing a tree and sometimes hiding in the tree's shadow. Mental illness touches everyone. And it scars. And it is feared… Continue reading Shunned