Thirty years ago this month, I became a mom and an official homeowner, both for the first time. I was 26 years old; my husband of four years was 30. We were in the throes of building our first house. Six months prior, the $200 a month rent we had been paying for a two-bedroom apartment was about to go up to $225. We deemed that excessive (which makes me smile now), so we moved our meager belongings to the basement of our unfinished structure and worked on completing it in the evenings and on weekends. When our son arrived, on income tax day, we had just finished installing our kitchen cabinets. The living room furniture, in trendy country blue and mauve colors,, was still wrapped in plastic. We officially moved upstairs. But the kitchen countertops were MIA, flooring hadn't been installed in much of the home, there was only one working bathroom, and most challenging of all, there was no air conditioning. That first Ohio summer was a hot and sweaty one. But we were happy!
Our May Issue
A Tale of Two Bottoms
The warning was not heeded, so the consequence was administered.
Dear Friends of the Good Old Days,
Chores were a normal part of my childhood and were likely an expectation for you in your Good Old Days too. My parents didn’t think twice about assigning jobs to each of their five kids to keep our household running smoothly and our property looking presentable. There were no questions asked. Most of the time. When I was in middle school, one of my least favorite chores was dusting. But I...
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It was the mid-1960s and still a time of manners and respect. We called every adult "Mr." or "Mrs.," the nuns "Sister," and the priests "Father"—and you never misbehaved in public. Well, actually I should amend that to say that if you did misbehave in public, you got it right then and there. And "it" was never pleasant. Mom had taught us to never crawl up on things at the grocery store, be it...
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