Writing Reality

  Reciprocity About two weeks ago I was chatting on the phone with a friend.   I expressed to her a situation, that I witnessed with one of my daughter’s friends. And the people that supposedly were my daughter’s friends in the past. There were things I didn’t appreciate about some of the friendships. My friend responded, “Reciprocity.” When I queried if I was incorrect in considering that certain friends and acquaintances only wanted to be her friend because she could help them. Yet, they would undermine her in various ways. My husband, two years before his illness told me to, “…let her be. Don’t intervene.” I did as he expressed to me. I didn’t like it, but I let the subject with him go most of the time. And before my husband passed, he told me he was wrong and I was right about friendships. I thought back to this, this morning as I was making my bed. It reminded me of this girl I was in Brownies with over fifty years ago. She was the middle child of three. Her family was upper m

  You really must forgive their ignorance. They do not know any better. It is such a shame. The truth is right in their faces. They just don’t get it. Even as much as they have matured, they find fault.  They wonder why they feel unforgiven, forgotten. Okay, it may be true. But there are valid reasons. Are you ready? Are ready for a little truth? A truth your unwavering ego doesn’t want you to know or rather admit. You don’t always know better because of your age. That is the first truth. Now, I’ll continue. I remember the query I had nearly thirty years ago, as my husband and I were walking away from a gravesite. The crowds of friends and relations were much behind us. There were tons of people there then. I whispered, “He was so horrible. How in the world could such an egomaniac, who harmed people make it into their eighties?” Norm responded, “Well, it’s not up to us.” I replied, “Yeah, I know. But what gets me, is that… he didn’t know all the things he proselytized about or said h

  Just as I was dozing off, my text message bell ‘tinked’.   I made up that word. Because I knew, it could only be my oldest three times zones away. No one else would have forgotten that 11:30pm was too late to text me. Yet, the timing of the ‘tink’, set off the ‘Mommy Alarm’. Its just that. Or it’s a really, super close friend in a bind. So, either way I’d better check the ‘tink’. Yes, it was child number one three time zones away. So, as adult as she’s working on being as a freshman in college, there is so much more she needs to learn. I saw her panicked texts. I understood her premature panic. She thought she was ripped off and now out $400. I texted to her ‘not to worry’. She wondered how this could have all occurred. I texted her, ‘…it will be resolved in the morning. I need to sleep’. It’s funny, I know I’ve gone through this type of panic phase with expenditures myself. You panic, because you want to be frugal. You want to be secure. She wants to show maturity. And its not a

  Today’s date may or may not be a day of infamy. However, it is for me. It is a day that marks a number of things in my life. It was two on this date forty-one years ago. One was a world event. Another was quite personal. Both were intertwined on that day. It was October 23 rd , 1983, as I awoke at about four in the morning. I had stayed over my fiancé parent’s home, for he was to drive me to a wait station on an army fort near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. It was to be my first marathon. Which I was ill prepared for. It was because I’d just recovered from the flu seven days before. As well, three days before that I received my marathon acceptance letter. Yet, I so wanted to be a marathon runner. My nervousness started as I realized I may not even be accepted six weeks prior. What was worse, was that the people who I thought might be happy for me to be accepted into the 1983 New York City Marathon, weren’t. They said all sorts of negative horrible things to me, when they saw I was

  Over the years, before and after I became a parent, I invited talks of others that parented about parenting. I came to realize years ago that I’m quite alone in the understandings of life at an early age. My mother used to say to me, “The age of reason is seven”. It was repeated so often to me as a child. And I believed it. I also thought, it was how everyone else understood maturity of the human condition. I can say the perception I had as well that saying, are incorrect. In coming to the above conclusion, years ago. I began to realize that there are many things I could not control as a human being, let alone a parent. My now deceased husband used to say, “We are a product of our environment”. I almost always have had a problem with that saying. Some of it does ring true.   But it’s how you understand that saying. A saying I have dissected for nearly forty years now. What does that all mean? All, both sayings.   Seven is when some children may understand it is incorrect to lie