Monthly Archives: November 2014

The Berlin Wall

Today is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Twenty-five years ago, I was a junior in college working as a teaching assistant for my school’s foreign language study program in Lyon, France. Armed with our Eurail passes and someone’s Lonely Planet guide, a group of us took an incredibly long train journey to Berlin…

Changing of the guard
Changing of the guard
goose stepping guards
Statue of Marx and Engel
The Brandenburg Gate
my piece of history

Please read my friend’s musings on the Berlin Wall.

This Boy

My dad was working in Korea when my first child, his first grandson, was born. He was finally able to meet him when we all converged in Minneapolis to celebrate the wedding of my brother and sister-in-law.

All weekend long, as soon as my dad would spot us, he would scoop his grandchild from my arms into his own.

“You look tired,” he’d say, “I’ll hold the baby for you.” Or: “He must be really heavy for you. Let me take him.”

Because I can be astonishingly dense, the first time I said, “I’m OK, Dad. I can hold him.”

“Nah,” he said gruffly, “You need a rest. I better hold him for you.”

No one else got a chance to hold the baby that weekend…

The words “I love you” have never once fallen from my father’s lips, but that weekend I heard those unspoken words when he gazed upon his grandson and said wistfully, “You won’t believe it, but in the blink of an eye, he’ll be grown up and out the door and you won’t even know how it happened.”

Dad’s babies

Here’s that baby fourteen Novembers ago…

November 2000

I blinked and this happened:

November 2014

Today my son was wearing a t-shirt my husband used to wear when I first met him. Today we measured him, and the boy who, I swear, was a baby only yesterday, is now 6 feet tall!

Oh, Time, our greatest friend and foe! May I remember that every minute of this precious life, even in the most challenging of times, is a gift of immeasurable value. May I not squander the days that I have with these beloved children under my own roof. And when they eventually do go out that door, may they fly back home now and then to my loving arms.

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder

Here’s what happens when you have adult ADD. You say goodbye to your husband as you head out the door to go to work. He replies with a smirk, “Bye! See you in 40 seconds.”

After a moment of confusion, you realize the impertinence behind this statement. He fully expects you to come back into the house (maybe several times) to fetch something that you’ve forgotten. And why shouldn’t he? After all, it’s happened every single day for the past seventeen years you’ve been married to him.

“How rude!” you say severely, but you chuckle nonetheless. Your mirth fades as you realize it’s really cold, and you haven’t even left the garage. You ponder your equally unappealing choices.

Do you:

A) Slink back into the house to fetch the coat that you’ve forgotten, but clearly need?

Or:

B) Do you preserve your pride, get in your car, and resign yourself to freezing your @$$ off all day long?

Now that my limbs have finally thawed, I can pound out my sad little tale…