Tales from a Mid-Lifer

  • It’s National Camera Day!

    Today celebrates photographs and the invention of the camera! In honor of National Camera Day, here are 4 of my favorite (amateur) pics: Central Park, New York City Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, Boston, MA Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada The Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York City

  • Is College Worth It?

    There are two dominant themes throughout the book Is College Worth It? by William J. Bennett and David Wilezol:  1) overpriced higher education and 2) considering the heights of underemployment and unemployment currently rampant among recent college graduates – a questionable return on students’ investment. Bennett and Wilezol provide an…

  • My Empty-Bucket List

    For many years, I’ve conducted an activity with my college students, asking them to create their own version of the famous “Bucket List”.  I warn them that the list should not include professional goals necessarily, but rather focus upon the “really neat”, “exciting”, “extraordinary”, places, events, activities, etc., that they…

  • Annul a 20-year marriage?

    I ran into an old friend of my Mom’s a few weeks ago at the grocery store.  This woman’s husband left her 15+ years ago with 7 young children.  He left her for a younger woman and his relationship with the kids is estranged at best. Embracing her in the…

  • My face through my son’s hockey helmet…

    My son’s wide, blue eyes beamed through the cage of his hockey helmet, and I noticed he was really looking at me.  I was standing over him in the Emergency Room, as he lay on a stretcher, still in full uniform from the concussion he suffered an hour earlier.  He…

  • Moms of Teen Boys: Be Encouraged!

    I got longer than most Moms.  More hugs, more “I love you’s”, more devotion from my son than any other Mom I know.  That was, until he turned 14 years and two months old.  In one overnight sleep from Tuesday to Wednesday, an uneventful week by anyone’s standards, my son…

  • Desensitize my Kids?!

    I was participating in a women’s prayer meeting at a church where I was relatively new. Until that day, I regularly offered prayer for others, but rarely requested any for myself.  As my children began Middle School, I realized that it would take the proverbial village to protect my kids…

  • Is It Fair That We Are Judged By How We Look?

    This is a question that I have asked my college students over the years.  Inevitably, they will argue that it is absolutely “not fair!” and without my intervention, end up sharing countless examples of when they, themselves immediately judged by physical appearance.  Therefore, determining that while “unfair”, it is unequivocally,…

  • The Teen Boys Sleepover

    Half of my 16 year-old son’s hockey team slept over last week.  With one eye on Iron Man 2 and the other checking their Instagram feed, they laid throughout the family room, with potato chips and soda bottles strewn everywhere.  Unlike when my daughters’ have girlfriends sleep over, I was…

  • Post Vacation Reality Check

    I had just survived a 22-hour car ride home with three teenagers in the backseat.  My bottom surely expanded another two inches from the countless hours of idleness.  Despite these truths and the annoying grunting by my family as they finally exited the minivan, I was mentally renewed, well-rested and…

  • Boston.

    Last year on September 11th, my 14-year old daughter was finally mature enough to understand what had transpired in 2001.  After an intense Social Studies class where they discussed 9/11, she arrived home, bombarding me with questions and for two solid days (and nights), she pondered, questioned, expressed anger, perplexity,…

  • What’s the 5-Power?

    Several years ago, my youngest daughter (now 14) announced that “5” was her favorite number.  She chose it for her sports jerseys, wrote it on her school binders, and began telling us that we were the family to the 5-power – because there are 5 of us and we are…