Tagged: thewaywewere

25
May
2025

THE SOUNDTRACK OF (AT LEAST PART OF) MY LIFE

During the 90s, in Chicago, I went to concerts and plays, and dance recitals, and festivals, and musicals ALL THE TIME. I have the ticket stubs to prove it. I went to a lot of sporting events as well, which surprised me as I don’t have any real interest in sports, but I have the ticket stubs from numerous baseball, football, and hockey games as well. I’ve been doing a major clean out in the millions of photo albums I have, most of which sit and gather dust over the years, as no one ever looks at them. I figured...

02
May
2025

FOR POSTERITY — LITTLE LIZ

When I was going through papers from my mom’s house, I found a bunch of letters she wrote to her parents a few months after I was born. She wrote to her parents every couple of weeks, and most of them are full of daily chitchat and talk about what was going on with her, my dad, and their lives. I’m copying here some of the things she wrote about me for posterity. NOTE: I was called Lisa after I was born (named Elizabeth for my dad’s mother’s middle name, or more likely, just because my mom liked the name!)....

03
Dec
2020

I WAS DREAMIN’ WHEN I WROTE THIS

I follow my college roommate’s daughter Erin on Instagram; in fact, she has two accounts and I follow them both (along with her mother’s, of course). One of them is her professional account (she’s a content developer) and the other is personal. She’s older than both my kids, and we’ve seen her and her brother along with her parents (who met in college; he was also a friend back then, and still is, though he’s not on social media) every time we’ve been home in Michigan for the last 23 years, so even though it wasn’t often, I still have...

12
Feb
2019

GROWNUP GAMES

What are you playing at? I just asked myself this question and it made me laugh a little. I’m playing at keeping my cool (especially at work where I was on a short fuse today) and playing house (which I sometimes still feel like I’m doing despite living independently, even when it was with roommates or my husband, since I graduated college) and playing at being an adult. Aren’t we all playing at that? Do you feel like you’re making it up as you go along, too? Do we all feel that way secretly and some of us are just...

28
Dec
2018

RETROSPECTIVE

here is something crazy about how fast time goes…it flies, it swoops, it zooms and I am left gasping again by the fact that it is once again the end of a year that sped by. It’s been a good year for all of us, and we only see good things for the year to come. Family & Personal Highlights of 2018 Keeping myself diabetes-free and my weight down Singing with Karin in a huge 1000 participant Gospelfest concert Anders participating in the year-long X-Cup mountain biking tournaments and Cykel Wasa My oldest best friend visiting for a week Martin...

15
Mar
2018

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

Not writing is habit-forming. Not reading probably is too, but I’ve never done that. Of all the things I used to do, but no longer do (with the caveat that I still could do them again someday…), writing is the one that I tend to miss the most when I don’t do it for any length of time. It’s been, give or take a couple of days, a month since my pinched nerve started acting up again, and I am still struggling with it, though this week has a seen a turn for the better. I had at least 3...

08
Jan
2018

BACK TO REALITY

I don’t think this was the first year we didn’t watch any holiday movies, but it’s definitely the first year where I threw away all the ones we have…they were on VHS tapes and we don’t even have a player anymore. Goodbye Rudolph! Goodbye Fred Astaire in Santa Claus is Coming to Town! Goodbye Grinch! Goodbye Ralphie! Goodbye (and good riddance) Little Drummer Boy! I recycled all the cases and Anders will take the videotapes themselves to the dump the next time he goes and make sure they get put in the right place. It made me a bit sad...

21
Nov
2017

GHOST TOWNS

Wherever we go, the older we get, the more we are living in the past. Everything around us reminds us of it, whether we realize it or not. Every house you pass, every building, every street you drive down, or road you take is a path, a place, a memory of something from your former self, your former life. And when you live somewhere for a long time, it’s even more true. Every rock, fence, tree, garden, has a history imprinted upon you. That’s the house the twins lived in, Martin’s former best friends, when he was young. And that...

07
Jan
2017

WAY OF LIFE

Sometimes I get frustrated at my writing here, especially as so often it seems to be only a litany of what I am doing and what I have done. It’s not the creative journaling that I envisioned from the beginning and which I managed to do for some years (on and off, obviously). I sometimes feel creatively stifled, but I know that I’m the only one that is judging. And, of course, the one doing the stifling, if that is really what it should be called. It’s like writer’s block of the creative kind. I can still write but only...

13
Aug
2016

WISH YOU WERE HERE

When you live this far apart from your loved ones, time together is never long enough, even when some days together it feels like it. I would like another couple of weeks together just to RELAX, without plans, without parties, without anything but time to sit together, talk more deeply about our lives, get to know my niece and nephews better, give my children more time with their grandma, their uncle, their aunt, their cousins. Time to do all the family things together that we so rarely get to do with each other: play games, go shopping, eat meals, hang...

October 2025
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