It was a good day today. A very good day.
My almost 5 year old daughter met my mother for the first time last Saturday. Today, she visited her house and met my step-father. She behaved well, even though she was up since 6 am, and my parents and my husband and daughter enjoyed each other’s company. After being “alone” for five years raising our daughter, it feels good to have another person help us on this journey. Now, we can be like most other “normal” families. More
And just like that, she was gone. I opened my email this late afternoon to find a message from my stepfather sent mid-morning. My grandmother, his mother, had passed away suddenly and peacefully. Actually, the email read, “relatively quickly and without pain.” When you read an email like that, the words kind of blur.
How did it happen that both of our cars were broken into this morning, that my husband continued to change the oil while the police dispatcher referred me to an online crime reporting tool. Everything seemed normal. Nothing was stolen, only rummaged through, because there wasn’t anything to steal. My husband and I disagreed on whether we should have locked the cars or not. I’m sure they would have broken the windows to find… nothing. Rule of thumb I learned from the streets- if there’s nothing to steal, better to leave the doors open. More
Even though Christmas has passed, we still got a few more holiday postcards trickling in. You know- the ones with the pictures of smiling families along with PR messages like, “Peace Love Cheer Joy?”
First of all, no one goes through life smiling like that. You would be considered really weird walking down the street with a big grin on your face. And yet, in America, it is perfectly acceptable to contort one’s face by pulling your cheeks as far apart as possible and then sending a picture of that to people.
And then you teach your children to do it.
I get the sense that in America, the wider your grin, the happier you’re perceived to be. More
Yesterday was October 2. It was my husband’s brother’s daughter’s 15th birthday. I worked that day. I wrote October 2nd at least 13 times in my work notes. I thought about October 2nd often that day. More