When Ian was two-and-a-half, and I was pregnant, Chris and I decided that our first-born needed to start preschool. After a short search of the nearby programs that did not reject those in diapers, we decided on a place in a church basement called Friendly Faces. I took Ian to check out the place. He seemed to like it OK, [...]
After spending almost every day of every week of this summer at home, we’ve been rather peripatetic this month. Last weekend, Chris, Hugh, Malcolm and I lit out for a tiny hamlet in Virginia (Ian was still at his friend Freddy’s house in the Poconos). Our mission: to meet up with Chris’s friend Jamie from UVA, [...]
We were on our way back from the St. Lawrence River last Saturday, but we weren’t delivering Ian to meet his friend Freddy in the Poconos until Sunday. What to do? To fill the gap, Chris had the great inspiration to plan an overnight trip that would take us to Ricketts Glen State Park. We had [...]
When you think of Victorian houses near the water, painted in a riot of pastel colors, you think of San Francisco, right? Or Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. Both answers are correct, but there is a third American town that fits this description as well. It’s a place so idyllic, so perfect, it feels like a movie set. The [...]
The stars aligned in several ways during our recent stay on the New York/Canada border. 1. We got to see our friends Todd and Suzanne, whom we’ve known for nearly 30 years, and their children. Because they live in London, it’s not as if we can just drop in on them whenever we feel like [...]
We loaded up the car and left yesterday for our annual rendezvous with friends at the St. Lawrence River. We actually packed jeans and sweatshirts – it is supposed to get down to 65 degrees at night. Heaven! This may be one of the last trips the five of us take together. Hard to believe. Enjoy [...]
Recently, our friend Laura was over at our house. As I got out the pitcher to pour some iced tea, she exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, you’ve had that Tupperware pitcher since you lived on Church Street in 1983!” She’s right. Once pale yellow, it is now stained a dark quasi-orange. This pitcher’s sole purpose in life is [...]
When my brothers and I were little and fighting or fidgeting in the car, say, my dad would tell us “Stop faunching around!” We knew what he meant from the context, although apart from him, our mom, and maybe some other relatives, nobody else ever used that word. It started to seem that my dad had made it up. [...]
One of the greatest days of my life passed unremarked by everyone else in the world. But I shall never forget January 5, 2004. It was the day after Malcolm turned 7. At his party, his friend Ryan had given him a Toys R Us gift card, and off we drove to the store to [...]
As computer users, I like to think Chris and I were on the early-adopter side. In 1980, at my very first – and very short-lived - job out of college, I was trained at McGraw-Hill Publishing to use a Macintosh computer. Several Macs were quarantined in a room high above the Avenue of the Americas, and as I [...]
