Posts Tagged Under parents
Nature Restores, Yet the Heart Remains Heavy
This piece has also appeared on KQED’s Perspectives and the Berkeley Times.
“Nothing’s left,” my dad reported to my mom. He’d gone by himself to find their house, because he didn’t want my 74-year-old mom to see the devastation of what came to be called the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm.
Later, my mom asked me to take her. As we approached Hiller Highlands, where they had lived for 11 years, my mom’s face turned ashen as she looked at the hills once covered with homes, including her own. The air was still heavy with smoke. All that remained were chimneys and black matchstick trees.
My parents’ ordeal began about 11:00 am that Sunday when my 78-year-old dad smelled smoke and frantically searched for it. He found nothing, until he opened the front door and got blasted by a gust of wind. Flames covered the hills and appeared headed his way. He grabbed my mom, and they fled in their car down Hiller Drive. They missed by minutes the gridlock that trapped and killed residents fleeing from Charing Cross. Continue… »
By Marilee StarkImmortality Can Be Found Through Our Children
Many of us go rushing through life thinking we should do something important, be someone, and then we die and recycle back into another piece of the whole and what is remembered?
I think of my mom and remember her Angel Food Cake. No one ever has, or ever will, make one like it.
I have her recipe and I fail every time I try to make it; so do my daughters. With her flat, antique whipper she produced it joyfully to the end; partly because I had surpassed her in so many other endeavors as she grew older.
When her hands grew arthritic, the grandchildren did the whipping and under her direction they were prideful and successful. The cake was there when I had a birthday, when my children were born; when I came home after surgery, and always appreciated.
I remember my Dad for wonderful rowboat rides up Curly Creek where he spun extemporaneous stories of the Adventures of Princess Virginia, or recited Shakespeare, Kipling, and Robert Service aloud to any and all who would listen.
I knew the “Quality of Mercy” from “The Merchant of Venice” by heart, long before I could understand its meaning. I remember breakfasts where he starred as the chef, making imaginative pancakes where his thin batter somehow managed to spell out our names or take the form of balls and bats or monsters. Continue… »
By Ruth ScottThe Day Will Come When My Children Grow Up
I am standing at the doorway of my parents’ house, next to my mother, with my daughter in my arms, and my son at my side.
Better Late Than Never
It was Friday before Mother’s Day, and I had 30 minutes to find a card, write a note, buy postage, and drop it in the mail. How did this always happen? Being a mother and forgetting your own on our “special day” was like forgetting your twin’s birthday.
I was in the drugstore, scouting the cards by cover, gravitating to the humor section, as usual, when I noticed a black & white message in the sentimental section and picked it up. “Mom, you’ve always been there for me,” it said. I grabbed another: “You always knew just what to say.”
These Hallmark versions described a mother I didn’t have and hadn’t missed until my daughter was born — a mother who greeted me after school with homemade treats and a hug and questions about my day; a mother who doted on her grandchildren. When my daughter was born, the stark contrast between what I felt as a mother and what I saw in my own mother’s eyes awakened a loss I’d never acknowledged.
By adminRecycling
Last Thursday, I helped with my daughter Elena’s field trip to the Marin Recycling Center.
Walking Elena and her two classmates to my messy car, I sang “To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump” to the tune of the Lone Ranger. I was expecting a boring trip, and hoped the song would generate enthusiasm.
“What’s that smell?” whined Elena when we reached the recycling center. The other girls joined in unison.
We entered the spacious education room. There was a giant television with a gleaming blue monitor, a wooden piano decorated with stained glass, a turkey made of scrap metal, and a robot comprised of different sized cans. I asked our tour guide, Devi Peri, about the parquet dance floor. She said community dance groups used the facility at night. “The room can also be rented for special events,” she added.
By Beth TouchetteMy First Kid
He arrived with great joy 15 years ago this March. He has absorbed all of my tears, shared my playful joy and loved me unconditionally.
I have, in turn, woke up at night to quiet his screams, cleaned up after his messes, gave him medicine when he was sick, made sure somebody responsible looked after him when I was away, and loved him unconditionally.
Thankfully, he approved of my husband when I got married and my husband willingly accepted the fact that he was part of the package that came with me. My husband gladly adopted him and embraced loving him, holding him and waking up to feed him. He has even put thought into his gifts at Christmas and embraced the fact that he gives me so much joy.
By Jennifer O'ShaughnessyUnsupervised
My 11-year-old son was recently invited to go bowling with the five other boys that make up his close circle of friends. The parent who proposed the bowling outing intended to drop the boys off and pick them up a few hours later.
I hesitated.
The bowling alley includes a full-service bar and an arcade, features that attract a seedy crowd. The local paper lists it as the vicinity of frequent nighttime police calls. However, on weekend afternoons it’s a mecca for school aged birthday parties. It’s anyone’s guess who might be hanging out there in the middle of a weekday during mid-winter break.
By Tina Bournazos
