Going Home for the Funeral: The Reprise or The Rising
The smell of my uncle’s house. That was what first struck me. It smelled exactly the same as it had the last time I was there twenty-some years ago. Back … Continue reading
Going Home for the Funeral
I need to go home. There’s another funeral, and you always go to the funeral. In fact, funerals have become the only time I go home now, and it has … Continue reading
Ocean Stones and Memories
Summer is the time for visiting with family. The summer months are just brimming with relatives. And it’s so necessary, this grounding, these reminders of where you came from. But … Continue reading
The Family Road Trip
There’s a radio station on the web called Pandora. And like it’s namesake, you type in your favorite artist and WHOOSH, that artist plus hundreds of similar artists fly out … Continue reading
A Blanket of Children
These days seem to be more and more filled with distancing moments. Moments when I try to manage my five-year-old daughter’s Mean Girl moments and she rolls her eyes and … Continue reading
Date Night and the Wind Turbines
I’ve been thinking about marriage lately. It may be the spring weather (finally), the birds looking for love in all the wrong places, mating for life and so on. I … Continue reading
My Mother’s Letters
I remember we had at least one television on all day and night for Butchie and he would scream in his stinking chair in the corner while cartoons blared. I … Continue reading
Becoming a Parent
Do you remember the first time you held a newborn? I was sitting in my sister’s house. She pulled out a boob that no longer even faintly resembled mine (we … Continue reading
Four Kids, One Limo
“Mo-om!! I don’t want her in my room! It’s MY room!” Driving home from school last week with every car seat in the minivan full, Reid was contemplating a play date … Continue reading
A Response to All the Things Our Parents Did Badly
I was standing in Jasper’s kindergarten classroom for orientation and during an awkward moment of quiet I turned to the mother I’d just met and said, “I feel like our … Continue reading
I love the word retarded, and it’s a complicated love.
I love the word retarded, and it’s a complicated love. Third-Grade Me: “Blah, blah, blah, my retarded brother.” In my memory time stands still in this very Quentin Tarantino way. … Continue reading
jen groeber: mama art 