Family | Mostly Bright Ideas

Browsing All Posts filed under »Family«

The Long Hall

August 24, 2014

It was the summer of 1985. Jill and I were taking the first steps into our thirties, and while our goals were still ambitious, they were no longer earthshaking. The dream of changing the world had begun to fade, and we had started to focus on the smaller world right around us. We wanted what […]

Life Isn’t Fair

September 6, 2012

103

My parents said a lot of things, and most of the time I had no idea what they meant. I was never sure if my inability to follow them was a reflection of my own ignorance, or if it was possible that what they were saying made no sense. “You can’t win for losing,” my […]

True Love

August 17, 2012

114

My daughter, Allison, is suffering under the delusion that she’s getting married today. This is impossible, of course, because she’s just a little girl. Okay, she’s not really a little girl. She was born in 1985, and if you subtract that number from the year it is now, she’s twenty-seven. So if you want to […]

Our Cats Ate Spaghetti

February 28, 2012

106

I grew up in an Italian household. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, but I also had no choice in the matter. Everyone in the family was Italian. Even the pets. When I was very little, my grandmother had two parakeets that would fly from their open cage to perch on her fingers […]

On the Eve of Greatness

January 19, 2012

I don’t write about music, mostly because I don’t know anything about music. I can’t sing, don’t play an instrument, and couldn’t explain the difference between melody and harmony, even on an open-book test. I’m lucky if I can figure out how to turn on the radio. Once in a while I find myself reading […]

Ghosts of Christmas Past

December 23, 2011

126

One Christmas Eve in the early 1960s, my mother told me to go to bed, because Santa Claus wouldn’t come to homes where the children were still awake. This made sense to me. What made no sense, although I didn’t give it any thought at the time, was that the Christmas tree was set up […]

Arrivals and Departures

May 4, 2011

I didn’t bother to check the gas gauge. The tank was full. It had to be. Everybody knows that when you rent a car, you pick it up with a full tank and you return it the same way. Besides, there had been some confusion at the customer service counter. I’d paid for a compact […]

What I Needed To Hear

April 15, 2011

252

Grown-ups say a lot of things to children. Mostly they make decisions, give orders, and plead for their sanity with statements like, “Not now” and “Put that down!” and “Will you please be quiet? I can’t hear myself think!” Such clear interaction allows the child to grasp the intended meaning quickly and move on to […]

Role Models (Part 1)

March 14, 2011

I couldn’t wait to grow up. I had things to do, big, important things, and when you’re five years old there are a lot of regulations holding you back. For one thing, there was bedtime, an annoying restriction that did nothing but convince me that the really great stuff all happened after I went to […]

Growing Up with Big Brother

March 3, 2011

When I was four, I was rescued by my older brother during a bizarre incident involving a mechanical bed in our house. Technically, there were two beds. One could be raised to sleeping level or lowered to the floor and rolled under the other, which was stationary. It may be known as a trundle bed, […]