Musings from my driveway, my home and my heart
“As a young child, I danced on the bar for nickels!! Lol!! Could you please call me? The emailed message added this tantalizing tidbit: “Your grandma and grandpa are my godparents!!” In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, people with a link to my grandparents who owned the Rose Café bar on Michigan Avenue in Detroit... Continue Reading →
Tidying guru Marie Kondo is urging the world to get organized while everyone is holed up during the COVID-19 pandemic. It turns out cleaning the house is forging connections between long-lost friends – and even strangers. My first inkling of this came in late March, when Iklas Bahoura-Bashi, a student I hadn’t heard from in... Continue Reading →
Most weekends, I head over to my granddaughter Eleanor’s house loaded down like Mary Poppins with books, games, Calico Critters and all of their accessories. The coronavirus quarantine wasn’t going to interrupt our routine. So we live-streamed “Nini’s Story Time” on our iPads on Saturday, with three of the Calico Critters standing in as “teachers.”... Continue Reading →
In the past 24 hours, my husband and I have received texts and emails from friends and family in Seoul, Beijing, New York and Rome about how social distancing is affecting everything from “talking shop” to stress eating. Here are the best: From our son Dan in New York City: “In our neighborhood last night at... Continue Reading →
Some people in Newport, Oregon are calling 9-1-1 when they run out of toilet paper and one acquaintance tells us his elderly father is urging him to hoard whiskey and cigarettes to use for barter in an emergency. But at my house we’ve resolved to keep calm and carry on during the coronavirus pandemic, panic... Continue Reading →
ANN ARBOR, Michigan – The buzz began in my Pilates class on Thursday night, when several female executives from the University of Michigan began wondering out loud how they were going to conduct business from home during the coronavirus pandemic. They were concerned about everything from domestic distractions and maintaining a professional atmosphere to gaining... Continue Reading →
My dad Chester Pyzik saw combat action in nearly every major World War II battle in the Pacific, from Operation Galvanic in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign to Iwo Jima, all the way to the Japanese surrender at Toyko Bay. But he never fired a single shot. Instead, as a Navy yeoman first assigned... Continue Reading →
My 13-year-old sister Claudia became something of a celebrity stalker in 1968, when every kid in my family and on our block was obsessed with baseball and the Detroit Tigers, who were in a heated pennant race and would go on the win the World Series. One summer afternoon, she jumped on her purple Schwinn... Continue Reading →
The Detroit bar I grew up in appears to be ground zero for creeping gentrification as the Motor City’s urban renewal edges beyond the downtown area. Once a landmark in a blue-collar neighborhood of factory workers, the bar – known as the Rose Café when my Polish grandparents owned it – now is called the... Continue Reading →
As soon as I spotted the brown tick on the white comforter on my bed, I texted my neighbors Jeannie and Stacey. “Ugh. Ticks are back,” I wrote. “Damn it,” replied Jeannie. “I thought about them the last couple of days and wondered. Was it on you or Rosie?” The tick likely came from my... Continue Reading →
Anita's Way 