Bronwyn at three and a half was already a Montessori scholar. Daily she trudged to an enlightened classroom where a teacher who genuinely liked children taught her how to scrub her desk with soapsuds, mess it up with fingerpaint and repeat the process. She was understandably enthralled. So much so, that Cee Cee at 2½ [ Read More ]
I had a very hard time with my Mother, her words mostly wounding, her anger terrifying. It was my father’s kind and loving heart that saved my childhood and my spirit. So when Mother’s Day comes round a tug of war ensues. I feel my heart segue-ing not to memories of my own childhood but [ Read More ]
I confess to feeling slightly foolish blogging about Titanic, but the phenomenon of Dakota and her pals going to see it in Imax 3-D – for their 34th lifetime viewing – set me to pondering what on earth could have precipitated that kind of devotion to a movie. OK. In the interest of full disclosure, [ Read More ]
My mother could foretell death. She’d inherited the family banshee, the Irish harbinger who shrieks her fatal message to one member of each generation to let them know that someone is about to die. “What a pity about John,” she might say, “he’ll be gone by June 15th,” and close family members knew enough not [ Read More ]
Because she didn’t understand that love was meant to be soft and warm, but she intended to be loving, nonetheless, my mother gave from her brain, instead of her heart. I believe her heart had been battered shut in childhood by a tyrannical father and ineffectual mother, but her mind was limitless and her teaching [ Read More ]