So far, there’s nothing like being 55, except being 56, to make me appreciate my mother and her very short life. I remember her at 56, as I was 16. She was an old mom back then. Far more common today, I’m still the old mom. And I feel it sometimes. Though not necessarily in… Continue reading On knowing what matters.

No less daunting than becoming a new parent is the parenting of teens and young adults. Even under the easiest, the lightest of circumstances, I am lost. At what point did we lose sight of their visions. At what point did we become the enemy. At what point did their reality become our nightmare. At… Continue reading When the dark shines through

I am much more the observer than the activist, and I so respect the activist. Like many people, I’ve struggled with where and how best to challenge those things needing to be challenged. And I watch my children do the same, the three in very different ways, none right and none wrong. After all, it… Continue reading The missing piece

You’re going to want to know this stuff. And if I’m not here to tell you, you won’t know until it’s too late. You’ll most likely already be in teen-parenting mode when you finally realize the truth. That is, parenting kind of sucks, no matter how great your kids are and how much you love… Continue reading Parenting my teens

In so many ways, we live in a world of black and white. There’s right and then there’s wrong. There’s left and then there’s right. There’s liberal and then there’s conservative. It’s become starker than ever in my lifetime. I feel like when I was a kid, even cops could see the gray area. The… Continue reading The Elimination of the Gray