Musings from my driveway, my home and my heart
I’m staving off the pandemic blues by throwing myself into a home-improvement project that includes a bookcase shaped like an elephant and several gallons of Benjamin Moore’s First Light pink paint. The idea is to transform a guest bedroom in my house into a magical kid’s playroom, one that will delight my three grandchildren once the... Continue Reading →
When I was in the second grade, my friend Patrice asked if I could come home with her after school to play with Barbie dolls and meet her mother. Even before I saw the iron lung set up in the living room of Patrice’s house, I could hear the rhythmic “whoosh.” Her mother, a polio victim,... Continue Reading →
Glancing down at the Christmas decorations around my front door, the Amazon delivery driver momentarily froze. “Rosebud,” he said, focusing on the old sled I haul out every year and carefully position amid the greenery and ornaments. I appreciated the faded pop-culture reference in the middle of his rush to deliver packages, and it made me... Continue Reading →
On a shelf in my kitchen is a plain white pitcher that used to belong to my husband’s grandmother Mary, a farm wife in Harvard, Nebraska during the Great Depression. In it I keep a handful of dirt that my sister brought me from my grandmother’s farming village in Huta Przedborska, Poland after visiting there... Continue Reading →
From the time she could hold a watering can, my four-year-old granddaughter Eleanor has been a dedicated gardener. When I bought her a yellow wheelbarrow last summer, her mother told me Eleanor sometimes would wake up in the early morning and head outside in her pajamas to rake leaves. Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the... Continue Reading →
Reading Bette Carrothers’ online “Our Town” column from New Baltimore, Michigan every Sunday night has become one of my favorite pandemic pastimes. The 85-year-old Carrothers writes about such seemingly mundane topics as yard sales, how Memorial Day ceremonies were observed (“with reverence”), and small-town concerns, such as a family searching for a missing memorial bench... Continue Reading →
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, my ophthalmologist sent an email that he was offering “virtual eye exams” to his patients. But when I developed a serious eye problem over the Memorial Day weekend, I was advised that I couldn’t be treated on Zoom; despite a continuing “stay-at-home” order in Michigan, I had to come... Continue Reading →
By Daniel Lienert From his Navy destroyer escort, the USS William C. Miller, my grandfather Chester Pyzik saw combat in nearly every major Pacific battle in World War II, from the Gilbert and Marshall Islands to Iwo Jima. Over the ensuing decades, he romanticized his war stories to focus on such details as the high-quality... Continue Reading →
The day after my parents’ 67th wedding anniversary on May 3, 2019, my mother was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer. Heartbroken, my 95-year-old father died on June 28, and my mother followed 10 weeks later. Determined to honor their 68th anniversary with a blog post, I began searching through family albums to find the perfect... Continue Reading →
When I was a newlywed living in New Baltimore, Michigan my father-in-law Robert Lienert used to drop in several times a week and visit while I made dinner. He would entertain me with stories about growing up on a small farm in Harvard, Nebraska during the days of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.... Continue Reading →
Anita's Way 