When I was a teenager, I spent an inordinate amount of time staring out of windows, over the water, into the distance, up at the sky — pondering my place in the world. I was prone to feeling overwhelmed by minuscule problems, so contemplating the vastness of the universe comforted me by making my worldly…
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Balancing blind faith and stranger danger
Before our girls went back to college this year, we gave them the usual advice. Don’t walk on campus at night alone, don’t take rides with strangers, etc. I stopped short before arming them with pepper spray. I wondered, do they really need to have their thumbs poised, ready to blind someone with pepper spray?…
When did Mom become so funny?
I was sitting at our kitchen island with a lukewarm cup of coffee, silently minding my own business. My nineteen-year-old daughter, Lilly, had just come home from her nearby college classes to grab some lunch, and while she sipped spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup beside me, I reviewed my afternoon “To Do” list and quietly…
College survival requires only the ‘essentials’
“Mom! Where did you put the cups for my smoothie maker?!” my daughter, Anna, yelled from our basement last week while packing for her last year of college. An artsy fashion design major who considers orderliness boring, Anna was infamous in our family for losing things and accusing others of taking them. To help Anna…
