Loving Your Family

Do I Have To Go?

February 19th, 2016
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white rose

 

 

When I was a young child, maybe eight or nine years old, my Mom said something to me about the meaning of paying your last respects to those people whom you care about that has stayed with me my whole life.

She was talking to me about a family funeral that she and my Dad were getting ready to attend.

I remember it as one of those conversations where I followed her from room to room as she talked.  This was not unusual given that she had six children to keep track of so if you wanted … Read More

Silly Family Laughter

February 5th, 2016
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My 88-year-old Dad misplaced his checkbook last week and over the weekend a full-on, pull-out-all-the-plugs search effort was executed by our mom, me, my five siblings and even a few grandchildren. We asked our Dad a million questions about the last time he used the checkbook and the last time he remembered seeing it.  We prayed to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost items, and then finally our Dad decided to call the bank since St. Anthony didn’t deliver the goods.  Thankfully, the bank said there was no activity on the account and no checks had been written on… Read More

Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 18th, 2016
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Today as we celebrate the birthday and historic legacy of civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King, Jr., I find that his words are just as powerful and relevant today as they were when he initially spoke them decades ago. King understood that in the face of racism and discrimination that the first response among most people is to want to protest and fight back in a destructive way.   It’s pretty much human nature for someone who is being abused to want to push back and it would have been easy for King to talk of using angry, armed… Read More

Mermaid — A Memoir

January 8th, 2016
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My wonderful son and I share a love of reading all kinds of books.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, or biography. A good story always grabs us and we like to share books that we discover and enjoy so much that we can’t put them down until we arrive at the last word. As a Christmas present, he gave me a memoir titled, Mermaid, a book that neither of us had read but still his instincts told him that this would probably be a book I would enjoy. He was right!  I loved it and whipped right through… Read More

The Ever Expanding Thanksgiving Table

November 23rd, 2015
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For as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving in our family is about reaching out and sharing. During our childhood, my parents always reminded the six of us that we could invite anyone that we knew who might not have a place to go and might possibly be spending Thanksgiving alone. And they meant it. The Cranston Thanksgiving table always had room for more people.  For friends who couldn’t make it home to their families, for people who had no where else to go and for elderly relatives who had paid their dues in preparing Thanksgivings past and now needed… Read More

Happening Monday

November 9th, 2015
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Me (left) and My Sister Sheila (right) with our Dad Wow! I don’t know about you but this past weekend just flew!! Mine was full of family activities and I was glad to get to all of them but in making sure it all got done, it seems that the weekend was spent going from one event to the next, and now I find, in the blink of an eye, that it’s Monday morning. I hope your weekend was productive and/or lots of fun and that many good things happened to you. Looking back on the past several days it… Read More

My Sparkly Brain

November 6th, 2015
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  Hey there my Resilient Friends! Any project that the multi-talented Amy Poehler gets involved in always catches my interest. Besides being hysterically funny, she is an authentically original entertainer who isn’t afraid to go against popular trends; especially the trend of superficiality that young girls can sometimes fall into.  I love her dedication to helping and healing young people by encouraging them to “change the world by being yourself.” Getting involved in your community is one way of giving back, and Poehler says, volunteering for that kind of activism also helps young people get comfortable with their true selves… Read More

Waiting for The Great Pumpkin

October 30th, 2015
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  Halloween arrives this weekend and it brings back very fond memories of me and my husband taking our son out to trick or treat in different neighborhoods and watching him run from door to door with his friends, so excited and amazed to be getting free candy! I remember all of his costumes, some of which I made myself (Thomas The Tank Engine and Simba) and some that I bought at the store (Cookie Monster and Ninja Warrior). The cute, cute, cute picture above is of one of my son’s first Halloweens.  He loved his Spider Man pajamas so… Read More

The Martian and Grief

October 12th, 2015
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Actor Matt Damon Plays An Astronaut In the newly released movie, The Martian My 25-year-old son went to see the new Matt Damon movie, The Martian, the other night and he was telling me that he enjoyed it a lot because it made him think about his deceased father. The Martian is a new movie about an astronaut who is mistakenly left on Mars, presumed to be dead after a fierce storm.  It’s a warm science fiction, adventure techie kind of movie that pokes fun at the geekier side of life. My son’s Dad was an award-winning journalist who covered… Read More