About 21 years ago, I learned one of my first lessons about being a parent. When our son was born, I thought he was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that I didn’t even realize how unusual it was that he was such a tan baby born to such a fair-skinned mother. It didn’t occur to me that something might be off until a friend – who had already had two babies – came over for a visit and said, in her usual, straightforward way, “I think your baby has jaundice.”  Thank God for friends who don’t mince words because she was right. A checkup showed that our baby was yellow, not tan, and had a typical case of treatable infant […]

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If you want a giant display of green leaves, I’ve got you covered. If you prefer a vase full of stunning hydrangea blooms, I’ve got nothing. For the last three summers, my blooms have been a bust. The strong stems and healthy leaves are lovely, but I want blooms. Is that too much to ask? My current situation is like having an ice cream cone without the scoop of Buttered Pecan on top. The cone is good, but it’s the combination of crispy cone plus creamy goodness that makes the combo a winner. I thought the problem was pruning. Overly aggressive pruning. Ill-timed pruning. Old wood versus new wood. It’s all so confusing. So this year I took a “less […]

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Yesterday, Tom and I went to Walmart Supercenter and split up to find what we needed. Ten minutes later, I got a phone call from him. Me: “Hello?” Tom: “I’ve got the stuff on the list. Where are you?” Me: “I’m on Aisle B-14.” Tom: “I’ll meet you there.” Then the phone rang again. Me: “Hello?” Tom: “I’m on Aisle 14, but you’re not here.” Me: “I said B-14. That’s B as in bumblebee.” Tom: “Okay, I’ll be there in a second.” Then the phone rang again — another call from Tom. Me: “Hello?” But there was no answer. Just dead air, so I hung up. Then it rang again. Me: “Hello? Tom?” Still no answer. When it happened a […]

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Do you remember the old game show called “Name That Tune”? There have been plenty of spin-offs and reboots of the show, but I remember the one on TV in the 1980s when I was a kid. Two contestants stood across from each other and wagered about how quickly they could name a tune before it was played.  “Jim, I can name that tune in 5 notes.” “Cathy, I can name that tune in 4 notes.” “Jim, name that tune.” Then someone would play the first 4 notes of the song, and Jim would have to cough up an answer. Now that we’re on the tail end of a global pandemic and the beginning of some alarming advancements in artificial intelligence, maybe […]

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Every summer, my mother packed my bag and dropped me off on my grandparents’ farm with a week’s worth of travel-size cereal boxes and a can of bug spray. I was about 7 years old, and during my second day there, Grandpa announced we were going fishing. I’d never been fishing before, and I’m sure he felt it was his duty as a grandpa to teach his descendants the fine art of sitting in a boat for hours, waiting for fish to bite. He packed up our poles while Grandma tied an oversized sun hat on my head to protect my ivory skin which already had a smattering of freckles. We picked up Grandma’s sister, Aunt Eunice, and the four […]

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My warning bark pierced the morning stillness. From my defensive position by the front window, I could see and hear the beast approaching. My furry legs are short, but my ears are mighty. I’m built for a job such as this. My canine comrades rushed to my side and saw the imminent danger. The big one let loose a string of deep, baritone woofs, and the beagle joined in with his signature howl. Our people, who are groggy and slow in the mornings, winced and covered their tiny ears. Then they glanced out the window and joined our barking, except their human barks sounded more like “Hush!” and “No!” and “For God’s sake, stop it already!” We try to model […]

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Maybe it’s hormonal. Just another cruelty in a long list of hormonal pranks the female body plays on innocent middle-aged women like me. But part of me wonders if I’m being forced to pay for the sins of my youth. When I was a 13-year-old girl in the 80s, I did dumb things, as most of us did. Keep in mind there was no Google. No dermatologists on Instagram warning us not to be idiots. We just did things we saw other people doing, and we figured it was fine. So, my friends and I – who wanted nothing more than to look like a Coppertone cover girl – laid out by the community pool or in the backyard on […]

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The buds are blooming, the grass is greening, and my nose is sneezing, so it must be spring. And since nature is sprucing itself up so nice and pretty, it feels like I ought to do a little sprucing inside, too. But this year I just can’t commit to traditional spring cleaning. It feels too big, too complicated, too hard. I’d love to have the energy for it, but I just don’t. So, I’m taking some advice I read in a recent New York Times article that recommends breaking up a big chore into smaller chunks – a bite-size chore, if you will. Last weekend, I chose my chunk – the wasteland of forgotten bottles, bins, and bags festering under […]

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Some of the harshest words ever said to me never made a sound. Because they happened silently inside my head. In the melodic, wise words of Taylor Swift, “I’m the problem. It’s me.” The Voice In My Aggressive Head – I’ll call her V.I.M.A.H – is part drill sergeant, part judge, and part critic. VIMAH is also mean. She thinks I should be able to do it all, at the highest performance level possible, all the time. Do you have a VIMAH, too? I think most of us do. We judge, criticize, and even berate ourselves internally with words we’d never say to another person. We wouldn’t even say them to our dogs. But somehow our own tender hearts are […]

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Once upon a time, in what feels like a long, long time ago, people had questions. But they didn’t have Google. So, what did we do? How did we make it through the day without instantaneous access to the bajillion facts that are now just a few electronic tap-tap-taps away? I grew up during this prehistoric information age, so I remember the options. I could’ve looked something up in our set of encyclopedias (as long as the topic didn’t start with the letter S because that volume was always mysteriously absent). I could’ve climbed on my Pink Panther bicycle and ridden to our small town’s library. Or I could’ve asked my parents, who mostly shrugged and told me to go […]

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