I was a college student at Cornell University in the late 1970s, and lived in a hippie co-op. There were five of us, three women and two men, three girls from the U.S., one guy from Switzerland and one guy from Peru. We shared cooking and shopping duties, and between the five of us we […]
Cornell University
Ithaca is gorges
Big Papa and I spent the past week in upstate New York. We were there visiting my mother and my sister, who is ill with cancer. I knew that it would be a tough, emotional five days. So, at the end of our stay, we sought respite for two days in Ithaca. It’s hard not […]
Mushroom Barley Soup for the Soul
The last time I saw my friend Dee, she made Mushroom Barley Soup for Big Papa and me. I could smell its delicious aroma the minute I stepped into her home. We’d traveled across the country, from Seattle to a town outside Boston, to visit Dee and her husband Gaylen. She had been hospitalized for […]
Smart cookie
Paperwork, official documents, a home study and a dossier are just a few hurdles we have to clear on our path to adoption. Our adoption to-do list also includes 35 educational credits. In 2007, when the U.S. signed the Hague Convention Treaty on International Adoption a minimum of ten hours of parent education was required. […]
Friends for life
Some of my earliest memories revolve around my friend Dee. I was six years old, living in a small town in upstate New York, when her family moved in across the street. My sister and I watched as they carried bed after bed across the lawn into their house. We were a family of four […]