Tag: family
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Simplyred
As the eldest (and, for a while, the only) son, one of his jobs was to escort his father to the urban version of felling the family Christmas tree—picking one out at the empty lot next to the hardware store. This trek often occurred on Christmas Eve, the strategy being sellers would gladly take what…
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Tabletop
It was the Grand Canyon of basements, making you wonder just how it held the two floors above it level. There was ample room for a seating area of castaways from former iterations of the upstairs living room, a fully (and I mean fully) stocked bar hand built by Dad (an icon, it turns out,…
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Dad
He entered the hospital on his seventy-fifth birthday and never came out. On the way to the house that was now just Mom’s, I tried to pretend this was expected, and tried to sort out how Dad would want me to feel. That part was hard. This was the guy who didn’t talk about his…
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Fearitself
Her mother had been raised in a house of false modesty, which really drove her crazy. Every Christmas and every birthday, the routine was predictable, as her mother verbally insisted no one make a fuss, all with body language that clearly suggested life was going to be pretty miserable if Queen Elizabeth got better treatment…
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Summerespite
There were days I wasn’t sure why I owned something that came with so much baggage. About three-and-a-half feet long, plastic, and the epitome of institutional gray, the tables had legs that worked like a kickstand; push the joint until it locks, and you’re good to go. Every bad memory of school cafeterias came flooding…
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Hastensandchastens
For reasons that defy geography, Detroit is in the Eastern time zone, which is great in the summer, with our 10 PM sunsets. But darkness often descends around 3:30 in the winter, and we’re all wishing we were home in front of a fireplace, not at the office in front of spreadsheets. This was the…
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Ella AI
Boston is one of the few big cities that has managed to maintain its essence as Ye. Olde. Village. This is especially true when it snows, turning those really, really narrow side streets into magical paths that are just begging you to don a scarf and stroll them with some serious hot chocolate in hand.…
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McFreenterprise
My oldest brother was asked to pick up my other brother and me from our piano lessons. Joe decided to make a trip out of it, so he left a little early to swing by the nearby McDonald’s, which was boasting its then-newest product, the Big Mac. He’d heard good things, and, always one who…
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Still
We hire a lot of engineers in Detroit, so I don’t remember which CEO was being interviewed. But it was the mid-90s as I recall, and the Metro area had just seen an influx of engineers and mid-level managers from Korea. So the question was simple: Why? The CEO paused, and said something like “They…
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Dadswork
My father’s work was a bit of a mystery when I was young. Returning home from a World War II stint in the islands of the Atlantic (no, really—Rhode Island, Coney Island, and the Battle of the Black Fly on Martha’s Vineyard), he followed his father’s footsteps as a phone company lineman. A summer or…
Six O'Clock Sky 