Pushing on a Rope
Parenting
All grown up now
I blinked and 20 years flew by. Happy birthday to our daughter, Catherine! Here’s to two decades of love and laughter, and many more to come.
A ride (or two) back in time
The weather was picture-perfect today, that ideal combination of summer sun and warm breeze that makes it a sin to be indoors. So out Basil, Catherine and I went, for a stroll down memory lane at Rye (NY) Playland, site of so many fun afternoons of our youth. It wound up being a walking tour. It started … Continue reading
Flashback Friday — Get Happy
Catherine’s ready to go back to Hofstra. With six weeks left to summer, she’s done with 3-year-old campers’ bathroom accidents and tantrums, over the lack of buffet food options in our house, missing the magic of a Starbucks at every turn, and so done with our lack of nightlife. To keep her chin up, she’s … Continue reading
Then and Now — At the Zoo
Catherine has a bit of time before her summer camp counselor job starts, so when she’s not slowly putting away the dorm detritus that litters every room in our house, she’s having some adventures. One day last week, she and Basil decided to visit the Bronz Zoo, because, well, why not. Naturally, they had to … Continue reading
Flashback Friday — Awkward Family Photos
Among the things I pass in the house every day is this bulletin board collection of photo-booth photos, showing the silly sides of Catherine and Basil. From left, see them in Seaside Heights, NJ on two subsequent summers; at the Pineapple Plantation in Hawaii; and the Long Island Aquarium. Their facial expressions never fail to make … Continue reading
Flashback Friday — Earth Angel
With three weeks left to freshman year at Hofstra University, Catherine is hard at work on her final projects and studying for final exams. Hearing her discuss it all brings me back to my own college crunch days, but also reminded me of this photo from Oct. 31, 2013, when she was studying for something … Continue reading
Games college freshmen play
Parenting is full of surprises, some of them more pleasant than others, but one of the great joy lies in watching your child come into her own. Now that Catherine is in college, Basil and I are treated fairly often to glimpses of the person she is, the grownup she’s becoming. We sometimes look at each … Continue reading
Flashback Friday — Sea changes
Snow. Ice. Bitter cold. We need a bit of summer warmth, so I’m flashing back today to June 2000, when my friend, Jacquie, and I gathered the kids and met up at Mystic Aquarium in upstate Connecticut. It was a great day — being together, seeing the creatures (the beluga whales were a huge hit as I … Continue reading
Flashback Friday — Warm Spell
All this winter weather has me thinking spring, especially with the forecast warning of single-digit wind chills starting tonight and more snow on the way Sunday. So naturally, I went searching for a Flashback photo that was just beachy. It’s Catherine, age 4, basking in the July sunshine at Tod’s Point, Greenwich. (No, I haven’t … Continue reading
Whiplash
Clearly the new normal thing is going to take time to get used to. Co-existing over Catherine’s winter break was like trying to do a dance we didn’t know the steps to. No one was able to teach us either. Now that she’s not quite a grownup, but no longer a kid, it all seems … Continue reading
Pushing on a Rope 