There’s nothing like a cup of fresh espresso, particularly if one is fortunate enough to drink it in the city of light. Sitting at a sidewalk café and sipping from our demitasse, Big Papa and I watched the world go by, Parisian style. Across the street at a butcher’s shop, two little girls stood outside […]
Friendship
In the same boat
One of the best things that has happened to me on my adoption adventure, is meeting some amazing adoptive moms-to-be (and now a couple adoptive moms in action!). Our agency has a private online chat group and a few of us have struck up a more personal relationship “off line.” For me, getting to know […]
Serendipity
Putting together a room for our child-to-be and collecting many of the various and sundry things we’ll eventually need has been a bit by bit process. Big Papa and I have resisted doing up the bedroom entirely or purchasing some of the “big ticket” items (crib, stroller) only to sit and stare at them as […]
As long as we both shall live
Weddings are momentous occasions. Two people begin their lives together. Sacred vows are shared before a community of loved ones and friends. A commitment is made to honor and care for one another for a lifetime: through sickness or health, for richer or poorer. Big Papa and I said our vows to each other merely […]
Food to make my heart SOAR
“She likes the top of matzoun and the bottom of pilaf,” is an Armenian expression which means ‘she loves everything good.’ I was lucky enough to enjoy a lot of ‘everything good,’ this past Sunday in a hands-on Armenian cooking class fundraiser for SOAR (Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief). All the money will go directly […]
Forty years of friendship
March 20, 1969. Backs straight in our au courant “pleather” mini-jumper dresses, Dee and I sat side by side for our fourth grade class photo. On December 20, 2008, thirty-nine years and nine months to the day this picture was taken, she died. We’d been friends for nearly forty-three years, since 1966 when Dee and […]
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 […]
Only the good things
“Only the good things,” is what our spinning instructor encourages us to think about this week of Thanksgiving. Letting those words take root is a good thing in itself. I’ve been feeling a bit sad. The sadness comes from missing my friend, Dee. I called her on Thanksgiving Day, a year ago, to tell her […]
From Russia with love
I scoop up a teaspoon of stuffing with one hand and grab a flimsy round piece of dough in the other, and carefully tuck and fold until a tortellini-like Pelmeni emerges. Ten eager adoptive or prospective adoptive moms stand around a table with me, scooping, stuffing and folding. Pelmeni are a Russian national dish. These […]
Gettin’ busy
A couple years before I met Big Papa, I dated someone for about six months. When that relationship ended, it really took the wind out of my sails. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, but there I sat, in an all-too-familiar and very unhappy place. In the midst of my misery, I managed […]