Where Do Forgotten Memories Go, Mom?

I worked in adult literacy for a great many years and promoting family literacy – including the importance of reading to (and with) your children – was a huge part of the work that we did. I do not recall learning to read but I figure it must have happened sometime between Kindergarten and Grade 1. I spent countless hours of my childhood buried in books, and yet I only have one photo of my Dad reading to me and my little sister, and none at all of Mom reading to us (there is a painful social commentary in there about parenting in the 60s that I will leave for another day). The point is, one day many years ago, now, my curiosity got the better of me: “Mom, did you read to us when we were little?” I asked. I still recall the surprised, halfway-hurt look on her face as she answered me. “Of course I did! All the time! Don’t you remember?” Well no, I didn’t remember. I asked her that question over 20 years ago and I still feel the surge of shame and chagrin as I wish I could take back my words and erase that look from my mother’s face.

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Eight Months Pregnant and Out of Gas

It promised to be a hot summer that year. Late June and already stifling hot, I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant for my firstborn;

My Daughter Isn’t Ready to be a Grown-Up

My daughter isn’t in any hurry to have a ‘real’ job. She’s not in a hurry to join the workforce; to make a name for herself; to carve out a niche in the world. To be a grownup.

Defining Unconditional Love – Three Little Pigs Style

I was a child in the sixties: a tumultuous time to say the least. My parents were very much a product of the fifties: that June Cleaver, Leave it to Beaver time when Mommies wore pretty dresses and did their hair and make-up every single day and Daddies went to work before the children were up and came back home just in time to kiss their offspring’s fresh, clean little faces before Mommy whisked them off to bed so she could serve Daddy his supper in peace.

Mom, Can I Come In?

Falling in love when your kids are teenagers can be… awkward.

The Last Temper Tantrum

My daughter was so quiet, in her first two years, that at one point a family member confided worriedly to me that she was afraid my daughter ‘didn’t understand French.’ I had done a lot of reading about children simultaneously learning two (or more) languages, and I knew – if this person didn’t – that my daughter understood what was going on around her, and very well, at that. “It will come”, I would tell the family member, with more confidence than I felt. “Some children are on a different timetable than others.”

I’m So Prepared for LIFE!

When my kids were younger, every summer vacation, we would go camping with my sister and my brother-in-law.

What Little Girls Are Made Of…

What Little Girls Are Made Of…

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice,
And all that’s nice;
That’s what little girls are made of.

Popular Nursery Rhyme

The author of the rhyme is uncertain, but may be English poet Robert Southey (1774–1843). (Source)

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I remember as if it were yesterday having a lively, friendly and animated disagreement with a dear girlfriend about raising children. Specifically, about raising girls.

My Mother Was a Clean Freak

When I was growing up, my mother was a clean freak. You could quite literally have eaten off any single inch of the flooring in my mother’s house: even the carpets.

More Cowbell…

It is a parent’s job to embarrass their kids. And it’s a kid’s job to be embarrassed by their parents.