When holidays like Easter and Passover roll around each year, I can’t help but compare my childhood to our fast-paced modern life. My memories pass before me like an 8mm film, with a jumpy picture and the clicking sound of spinning reels. On Easter morning, 1972, I was peering over the balcony’s banister at the…
Month:
The Outsiders: Can military families ever be ‘locals’?
On a recent drive to take our two eldest kids back to college after spring break, I didn’t mind when Anna commandeered the minivan’s satellite radio. But halfway through the Berkshires, my elbow hurt from fist-pumping to Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and I was bored with pop lyrics. Mercifully, Anna fell asleep, her head…
From Rags to Ratchet: Are there no riches in military life?
“What the …?” my 16-year-old daughter, Lilly, stopped herself short in front of our minivan on a blustery, rainy morning before school this week. There, on the driveway, was a pile of shattered black glass. Just above the shards on the passenger’s rear side was a gaping hole where the window used to be. “Holy…
Confessions of foolish military spouses
Twenty-four years ago, when I became a military spouse, I was pretty clueless. “Honey,” my husband Francis delicately explained through clenched teeth two weeks after our wedding, “the reason you should NOT lose your new military ID, is that you will need it for everything!” I thought the silly laminated card was an unnecessary formality….
