Category: Family
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Something I wrote a decade ago, that I think is worth sharing now … Families are like inchworms. Some members lead, some follow, but in the end they all end up in the same place, because it’s all one thing. If you’re at either end, it can be frustrating; that’s where the tensions start. But…
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Our family recently had a great surprise. My mom was having a bathroom in her home refurbished. The workman pulled out the medicine cabinet and pointed out to my mom that there was something written, in pencil, on the wallboard behind the cabinet. It said, in my dad’s distinctive handwriting: To Maureen, With Love Tom…
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We’re coming up on a week since my son Pete and Marissa got married and, I have to say, it was a damn good wedding. Now, I don’t have the depth of experience of the average 27-year-old, who has been to 19 weddings in the past 8 months, but even so, trust me, it was…
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My family moved one town over, from Hazlet to Matawan, in 1973, when I was in first grade. It was a move up — from a modest home, where the dormer walls of my room slanted inward, to the model home in a newly built neighborhood. We had a sliver of woods behind our house.…
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I was a pretty independent teenager. When I graduated college, I moved away from home — to Delaware, Maine and Pennsylvania. Never all that far away, but out of New Jersey. As a parent, my hopes for my boys meant “launching” them, about making sure they had the skills and mindset to move ably through…
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I’ve reached 56. Not a milestone. I did 55 last year. Lots of people told me the ol’ double-nickel was a bit of a trap birthday, that the half-decade hit them in a way the odometer turning to a “5” didn’t. Not my experience, but I get it. There is a certain settling into late…
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I was going through a photo album from 1968 made up of photos mostly taken by my father-in-law, and it was as if I was meeting him for the first time. Which, in some ways, I was. Charles Christopher Kirk died in 1974, when I was 9, Virginia was 12, and we were almost 15…
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It’s been a few weeks since Virginia’s mom, Rosalie Kirk, passed away. After a trip to Maine, during which Virginia grieved in motion, we’re back home in Pennsylvania and feeling Rosalie’s presence in the negative—the lack of the evening phone call, the absence of a need to plan a trip down to Maryland. In this…
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OK, so it’s been a while (4 months), but I changed jobs, got busy and looked up to realize the year was nearly over. So I hope your holidays have been joyful and maybe even occasionally restful. Here’s where we are in the story of us: I am four months into my job at Universal…
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Editor’s note: I tweaked my back last week and couldn’t sit for very long, throwing a wrench in my weekly newsletter schedule. So we’ll call this Week 3-4, and pick up on the regular schedule around Friday, Feb. 22. Also, this week’s is a little different, mostly a personal essay (And sorry about the subject line…
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We decided on our family trip to Italy more than a year, and have been actively planning it for 6 months, so it was kinda surprising just how surprising the trip was. We weren’t prepared for just how much we’d find in Rome, the Cinque Terra, Venice, Tuscany and Florence. Here’s what we saw, with…
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Virginia’s cousin Mary Plaine came (via train from Maryland) and visited us this weekend. We went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Comcast Tower’s Christmas show, then visited the Christmas Village at City Hall. A very Philly Christmas to all! -Some rain, but hearts warmed being together and trying to feel that hope…
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