An online journal for women engaging the third third of their lives.
The Third Third Topic: Relationships
Marriage, adult children, aging parents, friends, mentors, grandchildren. Does anyone else matter?
Perspectives on Relationships
Grandma Love
To be a grandparent is to enter into a netherworld of new, heretofore unexperienced emotions -- especially love. Not that we don’t know the deep abiding love of spouse. Nor that we haven’t realized the unconditional love we have for our own children. Nor that we haven’t l...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 60 Views | 0 Comments
What's Love Got to Do With It?
What’s love got to do with it?
I’ve decided this is the question at hand, given the news (c.f., South Carolina Governor Mark “Take a Hike” Sanford) and recent comments from my own grown kids who seem, suddenly, rather awed by the fact their father and I have been ma...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 302 Views | 0 Comments
Reunion -- Part II
I figure it’s not fair to write about a Class Reunion In Theory and not report back on the Real Thing. So here goes: It was great fun! I’ve been trying to figure out why, exactly, and I have a number of thoughts, none of them standing alone an adequate explanation but taken together...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 215 Views | 0 Comments
Plumbing Mom's Depths
Mother’s Day. Why is it that, while I have been a mother four times over and for 35 years, I still think Mother’s Day is for my mom? And not only do I miss her (she died in 2001), but I really, really regret all those years I believed my father when he said all she wanted for Mother&rs...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 347 Views | 0 Comments
Grief is Hard Work
Grief is so different from what I thought it would be. So much deeper, so profoundly sad, and surprisingly serendipitous in its ways of overwhelming a moment, a day, a week, a whole person. I don’t know where it goes when it leaves me. And I don’t know what brings it back, suddenly, o...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 389 Views | 0 Comments
What Friends are For
Let us speak of friendship. No, not friendship. Friends. Rare friends. Women who are real. Intimate. Thoughtful. Trusted. Caring. Generous. Challenging. Competitive. Competent. Insightful. Supportive. Intelligent. Fun. Loving. I lost one of the few I have to ovarian cancer about six we...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 308 Views | 0 Comments
When the Kids Move Back Home
Kids come home for a variety of reasons: for short visits, for holidays, for refueling between school and jobs, and for longer stays to save money or because they are down on their luck. Each of these events requires the parent and the adult child to redefine their dynamic. Often the reunions are fr...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 297 Views | 0 Comments
Walking on Eggshells and Biting My Tongue
My family is in transition. Again. Or still. Like most transitions, this one is messy and not very comfortable. I am ready, indeed impatient, to get wherever it is we are going in our relationships. It is clear, however, that I am not in charge, except with regard to meals, supplies, maintenance,...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 439 Views | 0 Comments
Sex in the City, 2008
My sister has offered to write the sex scenes in the novel(s) I have been trying to write for a few years. Younger and yet more “experienced” than I, she doubts I have the know-how to create anything sufficiently steamy or salacious. She’s probably right. Yet from what I hear, t...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 535 Views | 0 Comments
The Eternal Lessons of Seventh Grade
Robert Fulghum may have learned all he needed to know in kindergarten, but it is becoming increasingly apparent to me that it is seventh grade that holds the key to survival. Either that, or the entire world is stuck at the seventh grade level of social intercourse so I find myself constantly rel...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 330 Views | 0 Comments
How We'll Relate in Retirement
Surely things are different now. Surely my mother-in-law’s complaints and my mother’s good humor are not the sole prerequisites for coping with a husband’s retirement. Indeed, the word “coping” itself is a trifle negative for my taste. And yet, as I peruse the current...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 439 Views | 0 Comments
Can Mothers and Daughters Handle the Truth?
Sometimes it seems the Mother-Daughter relationship is the toughest of all. Even after adolescence. Long after adolescence. Most of us with grown daughters are making it up as we go; we have no good models. Our mothers believed we were eternally 12 and they were in charge. We – daughters ...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 384 Views | 0 Comments
A Holiday Role-Reversal
The term “role reversal” usually describes someone our age parenting her parent, the adult child acting in new ways toward a more child-like parent. But the role reversal I experienced over the holidays last year had nothing to do with my parents. It had nothing to do with my own adul...
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RELATIONSHIPS | 978 Views | 0 Comments
Blog entries on Relationships
High School Reunion
My 45th high school reunion is scheduled for next month. I sort of intended to go this time. I haven’t been back to my home town since my parents retired and moved away 25 years ago; something always seemed to come up that kept me from each of the eight previous reunions -- a b...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 21 Views | 0 Comments | August 31, 2010 2:21:04 pm
Not just sandwiched, panini-ed!
Have you ever been panini-ed? That would be sandwiched between the wants, needs and expectations of your parents and your children -- and then pressured and grilled.
When it happens, you end up scored with Life Lessons. Or scarred for life. Scarred...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 79 Views | 0 Comments | June 02, 2010 9:05:50 pm
The Gore-y Divorce
I am about to finish up Week Three of The Process of Moving My Dad From His Condo in Florida to Assisted Living in Texas, and while I have some great material to share about the Old Farts’ Table (and I mean that quite literally) at what I am calling the Haven, I was ready to mo...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 85 Views | 0 Comments | June 02, 2010 6:54:46 pm
Not just sandwiched, panini-ed!
Have you ever been panini-ed? That would be sandwiched between the wants, needs and expectations of your parents and your children -- and then pressured and grilled.
When it happens, you end up scored with Life Lessons. Or scarred for life. Scarred...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 64 Views | 0 Comments | June 02, 2010 09:58:07 am
I am Grandma
I adored my grandmother – her soft lap, her thick stockings and thicker eyeglasses, the old lady shoes and housedresses, her unconditional acceptance and love. She had no expectations of me (that I knew of) and it would have been impossible to disappoint her. She was Gran...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 151 Views | 0 Comments | April 09, 2010 2:36:33 pm
Mothers, Daughters, Friends
The daughter of a friend of mine – a special young woman and a very special friend – reminded me yesterday of the extraordinary power of women’s friendships and mothers’ modeling. Read for yourself: http://marburyvmadisonave It surprised me how instantly ...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 124 Views | 0 Comments | March 08, 2010 11:27:31 am
Mothers, Daughters & More
A quick note about a couple of new books featuring grown-up mother-daughter relationships. Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret life of Bees) and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, just this month published Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story and are currently on the book-selling cir...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 330 Views | 0 Comments | September 14, 2009 11:16:25 am
The Curse of Independence
Ellen Goodman writes of our need for a Declaration of Dependence if both we and our parents are going to understand what's needed from all of us to make our relationships work responsibly and lovingly through our parents' aging and decline (and, in turn, our own). Refuting my father's belief that ...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 276 Views | 0 Comments | July 06, 2009 3:00:55 pm
Take a Hike
Free counsel! Free advice!! Should Jenny Sanford give her philandering husband (currently South Carolina governor) Mark Sanford a chance (another chance?) to "try to fall in love" with her again. Or should she tell him to "Take a hike!" Your thoughts and comments, please....
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 268 Views | 0 Comments | July 01, 2009 7:23:45 pm
Loving Again
Here’s a dilemma for our age. As I have written, we lost my friend, Jan, to ovarian cancer in December. Her husband of 38 years was a rock. He generously shared Jan with us even when it was clear her days were numbered, and he has been good about maintaining our relationship and open about his ...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 326 Views | 0 Comments | June 09, 2009 10:54:49 am
What Exactly is a Safety Net?
The New York Times recently profiled a number of families whose living arrangements were dramatically altered after a younger generations' lifestyle and desires outpaced a realistic -- much less a failing -- economy and the "kids" (some in midlife) moved back in with Mom and Dad. While the article ...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 336 Views | 0 Comments | May 18, 2009 10:47:46 am
Bullying Broads?
Mean Girls, the movie, came to mind the other day when a friend started talking about the "new girl" on her tennis team, a player of considerable skill and youth who had been placed on the team to help them compete in the next season. Hardly a practice round was played before the bitching began: "...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 349 Views | 0 Comments | May 12, 2009 10:51:28 am
Encore: Mothers and Daughters
More on the mother-daughter relationship from the disarmingly simply stated words of Elizabeth Berg, whose new novel Home Safe explores it. A conversation with the women on www.wowowow.com even suggests a grandmother can offer special comfort to both generations as they work out the normal ebb a...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 314 Views | 0 Comments | May 08, 2009 11:37:23 am
The Girls From Ames
Jeffrey Zaslow is a jealous man. The author of The Girls From Ames, he wishes men were as good at making and keeping friends as women are. Check out his story at: www.wowowow.com.
...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 371 Views | 0 Comments | April 27, 2009 2:29:47 pm
The Grandma Debate
Suddenly, there are all these stories about women who don't want to be called "Grandma" and others who don't have time for their grandchildren. My friends, who excel at jealousy-inducing Christmas card and Facebook photos of the newest members of their families, The Next Generation, are not these w...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 333 Views | 0 Comments | March 09, 2009 9:49:19 pm
Redefining Friendship -- and Blogging
INTRODUCING: Margaret and Helen. Older than most of us, maybe, but funnier than hell. Enjoy!...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 350 Views | 0 Comments | February 17, 2009 10:29:47 am
My Facebook Valentine
I think the U. S. Postal Service is going to put Hallmark and all the other card companies out of business with this next two-cent price increase. The announcement came just as I was running out of my "Anytime" stamps, which I stocked, saving all of $2.70, when the price of a stamp changed two time...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 306 Views | 0 Comments | February 11, 2009 4:32:27 pm
Satellite Sisters
Check out www.satellitesisters.com. It's a website, blog, show (radio), and online community created by five real sisters who communicate from their various lives around the world and understand that "A satellite sister is the person who gets you through, makes you laugh, and every once in a while,...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 419 Views | 0 Comments | May 20, 2008 09:15:44 am
A Book of Her Own
My daughter, Sarah, is a better feminist than I. Stronger, more consistent, and angrier. That puts her out of step with many of the women of her generation (she’s 34) who reportedly take the hard-won advances of our generation for granted. She sees those same hard-won advances as meager, someti...
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 758 Views | 0 Comments | April 03, 2008 10:06:34 am
Are you still Santa to your adult children?
Does Santa still come to your house -- via YOUR MasterCard? When your "children" are 20- and 30-somethings, do you change the rules? Or does "Tradition" rule? How do you find the right balance? The right gifts? This story -- "The Top Ten Gifts for Adult Children" -- helps with the practical matters....
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Category: RELATIONSHIPS | 417 Views | 0 Comments | November 29, 2006 4:23:17 pm
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