Tag Archives: family

FMM 9 10 2021 Tethering

“Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.” ~ Mother Teresa. Today is the 101st anniversary of my father’s birth. My mother very cleverly gave birth to their first child on his birthday the year after they got married.  I’m sure he loved sharing his birthday with […]

FMM 7 9 2021 Triangulation

“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” ~ Desmond Tutu. I don’t know when I first realized that I was good at Math, or at least found the manipulation of numbers to be fun.  I remember being given a book of math puzzles, I think they […]

FMM 3 25 2021 Mean to Me

“The business of business is relationships; the business of life is human connection.” ~ Robin S. Sharma. I was already halfway through a nostalgia-filled weekend when I heard the news.  I had been following up on family connections having found a website that gives access to birth, marriage and death certificates, and was tracing long […]

FMM 1 29 21 Hey, Cousin!

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” ~ Dalai Lama. As a young child, I was used to family get-togethers surrounded by cousins.  On my father’s side I had nine cousins, and on my mother’s side I had 7, and when you added either of those to the five kids […]

FMM 12 28 18 Perhaps Inevitable

“There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.” ~ Charles Dickens.  It has been a memorable week, and a week of memories.  We spent one day sauntering (sauntering at brisk pace though, it was quite chilly) through the city center of Manchester, the city I was born in (but […]

FMM 12 21 18 The long way home

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” ~ Matsuo Basho.  They say we form memories best by associating things with something else.  There are times when a long forgotten scene appears clearly in your mind, along with the associated smells and emotions, triggered by who knows what.  You may go to […]

FMM 1 15 16 Each Perfect Moment

“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light” ~ Dylan Thomas In one of life’s perfect ironies, at a time when I am awash in a sea of emotions, I am also full of a cold.  Not surprising that my body should find a way to remind me to slow down, take better care of […]

FMM 1 8 16 It’s Complicated

“People who need people, are the luckiest people in the world”~ Bob Merrill.   Apparently I need to learn lessons about grief and death.  Having to deal with the death of a former husband so close on the heels of the death of my mother is quite challenging.  And as everyone tells you, no matter […]

FMM 12 25 15 YDHTBP

“You can’t always get what you want…. but you just might find, you get what you need”~ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. My mother invented text speak.  Way before there were mobile phones she used innovation and efficiency to create her own set of shorthand terms, ways to get more words into a small space. […]

FMM 12 18 15 In Praise of Life

“Though lovers be lost love shall not, And death shall have no dominion.”~Dylan Thomas.   Death is a funny thing.  It sharpens the senses like a shower of rain clears the air.  Memories once distant come close.  As a drop of dew on a leaf brings the colors and veins into acute focus, it can […]