About 5 years ago, I read about the idea of creating a memory jar for each year. The way it  works is to keep a jar starting on January 1st, and every time there is something that happened that you’d want to recall, you put a little reminder in there or a note. I had a mason jar filled with kids’ concert tickets, post-it notes with things like “OC Boardwalk G&G” written on it or “home run” or “Shrek concert” with the date on it. At the end of the year, I’d make the kids sit a

Teen car- sleeping was not as blissful as this but this rendition will have to do. I haven’t written in a while. I think about it every single day – and more than once. There are a few reasons why this is so but none of them really matter. The best way I can describe the hiatus is similar to describing that closet or drawer that has been on your To Do list to “get to one of these days” that is so cluttered that you don’t know where to start. Moreover, it’s not just cluttered

My daughter turned 13 today. Just like I did for her older brother, I posted a Happy Birthday picture of her when she was a toddler next to a recent photo. Sifting through those older photos transported me not back in time but almost as if I was witnessing someone else’s life. It’s hard to explain. She had her concert tonight and after the concert, I waited for her to congratulate her and wish her a Happy Birthday again. Standing off to the side was her mother and as I passed

“Feelings…nothing more than feelings.” Ok – that title is definitely showing my age (again) but as my son would say, “that’s the deal, yo”. My son had a friend over tonight and we all had dinner together – me, him and his friend and my daughter. I sat back and listened to them just talk, like normal teens do and I physically felt this tingling rush through my body. It’s the same thing that happens when my kids forget I’m in the car with them and they just are yakking away, in

I don’t even know where to start. This is the shortest month of the year and it’s not even over and it has been one for the books. This has been quite the month – divorce final on the 3rd, confirmed my job will be ending this year on the 11th and very possibly selling  my house (for a loss) somewhere in the remaining 16 days. At the same time, my mother is doing great after having had heart surgery, my dad is doing equally well, the kids are well and I have had terrific feedb

It’s like chicken soup (kitchen) for the soul. This week, I took my son and a friend to an area soup kitchen to do some volunteer work after school. It is important to me to expose my kids to not only the “have-nots” but also somehow reinforce the notion of service to others. In doing so, it becomes clear who really are the “have-nots” sometimes – and it’s not always on the side of the serving counter you might expect. In our custom-tailored world of playlists, Instagram acco

Sorry in advance for smudging your screen. I had someone who knows about all the things that are going on with me right now say, “keep going, you’re doing great” and I have to say, it took me by surprise. I have received some empathetic quips in the past but don’t remember anyone looking at me and basically making me think that maybe, just maybe, I am doing ok. It’s sort of like the blizzard we just had here on the East Coast – there’s a lot of shit that went down but it’s no

My mother had open heart surgery this past week. Nothing snaps you out of the self pity associated with job uncertainty, divorce, financial instability and overall restlessness like sitting 175 miles away in your home while you know the person who gave birth to you is on a ventilator while someone rewires her heart. My kids and I just returned from visiting her (and my dad) and there were some key takeaways (sorry – that was so disgustingly corporate) – there were some import

Love. Whatever type of leader or person is associated with the quality of decisiveness – well, I was not that person today. After several weeks of trying to first find a way to live with two cats who were problematic from many standpoints and then trying to find a home for them, the plan was to get them to a shelter this evening. I had planned the whole thing out including the involvement of the kids and resigned myself to moving forward despite knowing how hurtful it was to

My kids are upstairs in the spare room working on their homework. I just went up to check on them because it is eerily quiet from the usual complaining, procrastinating, laughing and debating that typically accompanies doing homework within 10 feet of each other. My parents were visiting this weekend and my mother told me that she and my dad were remarking how they can always tell when my kids are home with me or not by the tone of my voice. I thought it may have to do with t

When else am I going to be able to use an image like this? It’s a mother, not a father, but we do have the same hair. I feel like the fact that there are technical difficulties right now as I sit here with my boy watching the World Series is a higher authority telling me to not let myself off the hook for writing tonight. So here it goes. Tonight, I wanted to write about a text that I got from my daughter yesterday after dinner. She plays field hockey, which just ended today,