Category Archives: family

Taste Memory

Becoming a vegetarian in your teenage years can leave you with complicated memories of previous Thanksgivings. I was never much of a fan of turkey meat when I was an omnivore, but I’ve always been big on mashed potatoes, and given Mom’s predilection for sneaking some of our favourite foods into every holiday dinner, I was still able to enjoy a lot of the food at Thanksgiving dinners after I went vegetarian. (Dealing with family members outside of Mom, though, was another matter entirely.) Even…

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You Never Really Forget

[The following blog contains discussion of child abuse.] I got a new bicycle for my tenth birthday. I wish I could say that was a happy memory for me, but as I was in my father’s wood shop later while he was assembling it, he handed his pocket knife to me (I think he’d just used it to open some kind of packaging) and told me to close it. Never having used a pocket knife before, I asked him how to do that, and he…

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Object Permanence

After one of the warmest winters in recent memory, trees are just now beginning to take leaf here in Toledo. That event is normally a happy one for me, as I can finally relax about the perils of winter driving, hang my heavy coat up and get ready for the most tolerable of all the seasons in this part of the country. (I’m still a summer child, but great googly moogly, have they been getting too hot around here lately.) This year, though, the reminder of…

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Let Me Tell You About My Mom

Two days ago my mother turned 66 years old.  I wish I could devote this blog merely to that fact, but present circumstances prevent me from doing so, and require me to focus on some of the less pleasant aspects of her current living situation. Mom, although certainly a strong and independent woman, always wished to be a homemaker.  After my sister was born in 1966, Mom gave herself over entirely to parenting and homemaking.  In my younger years Mom kept a small garden in…

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Braving the Storm

I swear, if I had the money right now I’d hire someone to beat me about the head with a loaf of whole wheat bread if I go a week without updating the .org, let alone over a month. Anyway, back in April I announced on my Twitter and Facebook that I was moving to Cleveland this summer, and that I’d post a .journal entry about the whole thing in May.  This is, in a way, the culmination of something I’d been working on since…

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