All Purls. No Swine.
So here I am, the day before my Queen's funeral, trying to figure out what to do to celebrate her life and my own Britishness (not a bit of the overabundance of which takes away a whit of my love for my adopted country, I assure you). Some of my family in the UK will… Continue reading In Praise of Afternoon Tea
My mother-in-law, Geraldine Zbozny, died fifteen years ago today. Here's a reprise of a post I've published annually for the past few years: It’s been fifteen years since my mother-in-law passed away, and perhaps it’s time to tell a bit of her story. Geraldine Virginia was born on May 13, 1918. She’d have been 104… Continue reading A Mother-In-Law For the Ages
Those words were spoken by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, to the family members of those who perished on September 11, 2001. And I’ve often thought she must have been channeling C.S. Lewis at the time: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.… Continue reading “Grief is the price we pay for love”–September 11, 2022
“I have to be seen to be believed”–Queen Elizabeth II The only British monarch of my lifetime died today. She was crowned in June 1953, slightly more than a year before I was born. I was named after her, “Elizabeth,” and–for my middle name–after my grandmother who was to die when I was only a… Continue reading We Saw Her. We Believed. And Now She’s Gone.
It's almost time to send another hot, muggy, and sometimes problematic, July into the memory banks forever. After the last two rather miserable locked-down ones, I'll have some fond remembrances of this 2022 version, including a very enjoyable dinner with friends from out-of-town, random acts of kindness from strangers and family, the completion of bathrooms,… Continue reading Goodbye July: Keep Calm and Picnic On
To be perfectly clear from the outset, I've been living in a construction zone since 1986, the year the late Mr. Right and I moved out to the country and started on our house. Large swaths of the drywall were never painted. Much finishing was left undone. Doors have been missing. Floors were, in some… Continue reading Feeling Grateful, Blessed, and Very–Very–Clean
A few months ago, I was invited, by someone I've known slightly online for a number of years, to join a book club. Rather trepidatiously, I agreed, with the stipulation that I couldn't be much involved for several weeks due to some personal commitments around the same time as their weekly online meetings, commitments which… Continue reading Blessings from the Great Beyond: The Machine That Thinks Like a Man
Today is the second anniversary of my husband's death. I mark it by including the tribute I wrote for him at the time, and with the concluding quatrain from Tennyson's magnificent In Memoriam A.H.H: I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; Tis better to have loved and lost Than… Continue reading Frank Zbozny: In Memoriam
My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood--Gerald Durrell I was a voracious reader as a child. If it came between endboards, I read it. Too young for me (I loved the Peter Rabbit tales for years longer than I should… Continue reading “The Gift of My Childhood”
Please forgive me. This is, largely, a re-post from many years ago, in the Ricochet group writing category “heroes.” I’ve changed it a bit. But the sentiment’s the same. I offer it today on what would have been my mother's 94th birthday: A few weeks ago, when I signed up for this post, I’d never… Continue reading Mother’s Day Hero: My Mum