Family history can be filled with surprises. Good ones, and some not so good ones. Finds we make in our family history often prove or disprove something we have believed for years.When my mother died in 2001, we found so many surprises among her personal belongings. Who would have believed she’d kept every card she’d […]
Family History
Second Cousins Mean More Than You Know
Where did I come from? Which relatives do I look like? I was 12 when I first met any of my dad’s family. Raised in an orphanage, Daddy was separated from his sister and brother around 16. But he had persevered in his search for them, and in 1958 he found them living in Florida. […]
Let’s Start at the Very Beginning…A Very Good Place to Start
Perhaps the title sounds a bit familiar. The words form a phrase from the song, “Do Re Mi“from The Sound of Music. When thinking of ways to make my blog focus more memoir-centric, I kept going back to the beginning. My beginning. When I started out in this life. It was 1946. February 10 the day. My […]
Mother’s Day and My Memoir
Years ago I hated Mother’s Day. The search for a card was the worst. A card that didn’t say: “Mom, you’re the greatest,” “I adore you, Mom,” “Mother, you’re the best ever!” And Hallmark had plenty more I ignored and didn’t buy until I felt guilty. The verses and kudos didn’t fit the mother I […]
A Day in the Life | Easter (Episode #2)
Welcome to the second installment in my A Day in the Life series of short creative nonfiction pieces drawn from days gone by. I hope you enjoy them. Easter One Easter Sunday stands out in my mind above all others. I was around age four. Dressing up was a highlight for me as it was […]
A Day in the Life | First Photographs (Episode #1)
For some time the idea of writing creative nonfiction shorts as a way of looking back at my life has been niggling at me. A recyclable phrase for a title, one my readers would remember and hopefully flock to, took a while to conjure up. But I finally heard it the other day, and I introduce you […]