A few days ago, while dropping our youngest child, Lilly, off to start her freshman year of college, I realized that a certain phase of my life as a mother was coming to an end. Over the past 23 years, I have become accustomed to putting the needs of our three children before all else….
Middle-Age
The price-less gifts brought home from deployments
I have a drawer at home filled with loving gifts from my husband, Francis. They are things he picked up while on military travel or deployments during his 28 years in the Navy. He would arrive home, and no matter how travel-weary he was, he’d gather up our family and give each of us a…
The Politics of Marriage: What Congress might learn from husbands and wives
In theory, marriage should be the perfect balance of power between two parties. A husband is the yin to his wife’s yang. Spouses are each other’s “better halves.” Couples are like planets exerting complimentary gravitational pulls, caught in each other’s orbits, circling together in one planetary system. Romantic, right? But in reality, marriage is often…
Totally Tubular
You can call me Parent of the Year. I just gave my 17-year-old daughter permission to go “cliff diving” with her friends at a rocky outcrop overlooking the bay. As counter-intuitive as this may seem for a parent, I smile when my children seek out the kind of old-fashioned, risky fun I had when I…
What I believe about Hell and hand baskets