Lori Duff Writes
Recently, my family took a road trip to visit my parents in Ft. Myers, Florida. We’ve taken this trip many times. It is about six hundred miles, door to door, mostly on long, boring stretches of I-75, with not much to look at but billboards offering vasectomies, strippers, religious salvation, and outlet malls. There are plenty…
My mother’s mother’s sister, Aunt Pearl, had an old guitar that used to belong to her son, Jeffrey, that she wanted to give my daughter. Aunt Pearl, an admirably independent nonagenarian, lives alone in a two story house near the beach in New York, and, if you had to pick a celebrity she resembled the…
One of the great joys of being a parent is the chance to drive to East Bumblefudge on your weekend to watch your children participate in whatever sporting/academic/competitive event is going on that Saturday. This past weekend my daughter had an archery tournament in a location a little over two hours from our home. We were…
Decades after the test, how would you do taking SAT Practice Questions? My son took the SAT the other day. He’s only in Seventh Grade, but he took it for the Duke Talent Identification Program. His theory? I’m only in Seventh Grade. I’m not going to study. I want to just see how I do.…
I tried to slip one of my daughter’s teachers a twenty dollar bill the other day, but she wouldn’t take it. I think she just felt hinky taking unexpected cash money from me, though my guess is if I had handed her a $20 gift card to an office supply store she’d have taken it.…
Last week, I wrote about chaperoning a middle school band festival and finding ourselves in the kind of hotel you’d expect to see chalk outlines in. Click here to read the beginning of the story. I stood in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do. The girls had plopped themselves on the…
Moms aren’t allowed to get sick. Lori Duff Writes about how she went against the rules, got sick anyway, and ended up with a Parenting Win. I have no time to get sick. No time at all. I don’t know about you, but there are only 24 hours in my day. Laundry doesn’t fold itself,…
Author’s Note: On Saturday, October 25, 2014, my son became a Bar Mitzvah. It is traditional for the Bar Mitzvah boy’s parents to say nice things about him to the whole congregation. Following is my speech from her son’s Bar Mitzvah. Normally, it is bad form to brag about your kids to a captive audience. But…