“The juice! Don’t forget the juice!” my mother-in-law, Dolores, called after me as I made my way down her front steps and toward my car. Her anxious face appeared in the doorway and she thrust a half-gallon bottle of cranberry juice toward me. I didn’t want the stupid juice. “Thank you,” I answered weakly. I … Read more
“Do you think we’ll ever really be grown up?” I remember asking my next-door neighbor and best friend Krissy years ago. “Do you think we’ll ever talk about gas prices and health insurance and stuff?” We two ten-year-olds sat on our purple bicycles with sparkly tasseled handle bars and funky flowered banana seats as we … Read more
I pause in the supermarket aisle with an oversized cardboard box in my hand. I want to buy it — and yet something inside me recoils at the thought of placing this particular item in my shopping cart. My fingers clutch the cardboard as I study the label: 100% Real Potatoes. Mashed potatoes in minutes. … Read more
The other day, I had a couple of the girls with me in the car while we ran some errands. A familiar song came on the radio and, without pausing to think, I turned up the volume. “What is this music?” my 7-year-old asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Oops, I wasn’t alone. I turned … Read more
As a homeschooling mother of eight kids, I hear my share of “How do you do it?,” and I usually don’t know how to answer. My life is just my life. But here, as a means of appeasing the curious, I offer this humbling peek inside a “normal” day for me. 5:15 — Wake up … Read more