In her later years, my Italian grandmother couldn’t remember what day it was or her own name. Yet before leaving the house, she never forgot to grab her black leather pocketbook with the single-snap closure that safely housed her dentures, balled up in a slightly-used Kleenex that ultimately ended up being thrown in the trash. By her. One minute Nonna would be sitting in her tattered living room chair, and the next she’d be out the front door, down the crumbled cement steps and halfway up the block, on a mission to go home. We soon figured out that “home” meant back to Italy, where she was born on this…
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Bite me
I have failed as a mother. Evidently, our fur-baby tried to bite Sprinkler Guy John last spring during his annual startup visit. This was news to us when we called last week to set up our winterizing appointment with the irrigation company. The owner’s wife answered and made some small talk, saving the best for last. “Oh, and, um, you’ll have to lock up your dog when Sprinkler Guy John’s there because a note in your file says she nipped at his baby-blue cotton elasticized surgical shoe covers back in April. Sorry.” What? A note in our file? Nipped at his what? Sorry? Suddenly, I’m transported back to Goodale Elementary…
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Retired lady
Six years ago, after 25 years of too much work and not enough play, I retired. It was time to leave. And don’t forget what Cicely Tyson’s character, Sipsey, said about Idgie Threadgood’s beloved friend, Ruth, in the film, “Fried Green Tomatoes”: “A lady always knows when to leave.” For Sipsey, who nursed Ruth through terminal cancer and gave her the lethal dose of morphine that ended her pain, leaving meant dying. For me, that job – the hours, the workload, the stress – was killing me. Staying meant dying. Leaving meant living. Performing the duties of not one but two people myself for several years had taken its toll on my…
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Half full
For most of my life, I’ve been a “glass-is-half-empty” kind of person. Maybe because as a working journalist for more than three decades I became rather jaded covering the news. The daily grind turned this once idealistic college graduate into a hard-nosed, cynical reporter. Half full or half empty. Pick one. You are what you are. Yesterday, heading to the dentist for a routine teeth cleaning, I was daydreaming about how much I loved driving my 1965 Mustang with the top down on crisp autumn days, with visions of fresh apple cider and warm, cinnamon-sugar doughnuts dancing in my head. I wish fall could last forever. Then the car lurched…
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Alpha bits
Andrew sounded a tad annoyed even though it was his 10th birthday, a momentous occasion for most 9-year-olds, to be sure. “Man, it takes sooooo long to go from 8 to 9 and then 9 to 10,” said my thoughtful great-nephew with surprising dramatic flair. He was decidedly relieved to join the ranks of double digits earlier this month. The dude is wiser than his years, a small but mighty soccer player who reads hardcover books and can tell a knock-knock joke with the best of them. Born in 2009, Andrew is considered to be a member of Generation Z, whom demographers say were born from the mid-1990s into the…
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Dreams do come true
The 25th annual Woodward Dream Cruise jammed up 10 miles from Ferndale to Pontiac, Michigan, last weekend. My face still hurts from smiling so much. The third Saturday in August has been a national holiday in Motown since 1995. It began as an effort by Nelson House and a handful of volunteers to raise money for a children’s soccer field in Ferndale, just north of Detroit. They hoped to recreate the nostalgia of the 1950s and ’60s, when youth, music and Motor City steel roamed Woodward Avenue, America’s first highway. That year, 250,000 people participated, nearly 10 times the number expected. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, the…
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Friends for life
It took a rather large pour of Chateau Grand Traverse Late Harvest Riesling, but we finally decided the last time we saw each other in person was 25 years ago. My friend Jean was living in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Joe, and their 6-month-old son, Patrick. I was living in Delaware, between newspaper jobs, barely earning minimum wage at a small medical office. It was August 1994. The debut of ”Friends” changed TV’s landscape forever. America Online offered a gateway to something called the World Wide Web. A first-class stamp was 29 cents. Regular gas was $1.11 per gallon. 1994: Patrick and me in D.C. Now St. Louis residents,…
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Family reunion
Every family has a story. Welcome to ours. Twenty adults, nine kids and five dogs spent a long weekend in one big house on the lake. Sounds like the makings of a sitcom. We have reunions with relatives from my mother’s side of the family every couple of years. It helps us know what’s going on in each other’s lives, and reminds me again why I don’t have children. This year most of us managed to be free the second weekend of July to come together for a few days of fun, food and family at my middle sister’s place in Lakeport, Michigan, just north of Port Huron. We were…
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Ewe never know
“Is there recess in college?” asked the prepubescent boy on the green and white shuttle bus taking us back to our dorm. “That depends,” his 70-ish grandmother said with a grin. Her response took me back to my undergraduate days at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, about 40 miles north of Detroit. My college experience involved commuting, working summers to earn money while living at home to save money to do more commuting. It took me a little over four years to earn my journalism degree, but I did it. Not the most fun I ever had. If I could do it over again, I would have somehow gone away…
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‘Beauty-full day!’
For my paternal grandfather, there was no such thing as a bad day. “Beauty-full day!” he’d say just like that to anyone within earshot, as he puffed on his unfiltered Camel cigarette. With glasses and a thick mustache, he always sported a ratty beige cardigan sweater, even in summer. I don’t remember him wearing anything else. Above, Jiddu, in his later years. Top, Esper in his 20s. More than 100 years ago this month, Esper John, my father’s father who was known as Jiddu (grandfather in Arabic), fled Damascus, Syria. He had his reasons. From the many stories passed down through the generations, Jiddu mostly wanted to avoid being conscripted…
