I will never, EVER get used to seeing Adam Ant and Duran Duran vinyl albums in antique shops. It nauseates me to see my youth tossed into plastic milk crates right next to the milk glass, art deco costume jewelry, and old, dusty pillbox hats. That said, coming across a “vintage” rotary dial phone–also from my youth–next to all of that same stuff last month didn’t really bother me. Go figure. Maybe it’s because I didn’t hang posters of rotary dial phones on my bedroom walls, and I certainly didn’t spend every waking moment swooning as I watched rotary dial phone videos on MTV. It occurred to me when I…
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Lilacs
For the better part of the 70s, my family lived in a duplex in the south suburbs of Chicago. I remember lots of moments from the carefree years spent there: I had a very happy childhood and thinking back on those days always makes me smile. I don’t know if the neighborhood was “full of kids”, though I had several good friends who lived practically within arms’ reach. One of my best friends at the time lived a few doors down, one lived in the other half of our duplex, and two others lived in the two duplexes behind us, across an expansive lawn that ran behind the houses like…
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The Other Side
I had just turned eighteen the month before Jim and I were married. When I moved to Norfolk, Virginia–where he was stationed for sea duty–we rented a townhouse off of the Naval base in a military family-only subdivision. That neighborhood proved to be something wonderful for me, a much-younger-than-average new bride whose husband would be going out to sea for weeks and months at a time. In the first four years we were married, he was gone for more than two-and-a-half years. It was okay, though. Even though it was difficult to be apart at the time (this was before cell phones and internet!), my being left at home alone…
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Disney Magical Moments
I went to see “Disney On Ice” with my sister over the weekend. The advantage of attending a show like that without bringing children along–besides the lack of pressure to buy overpriced souvenirs and being among the first people out of the parking lot when it’s over because you don’t have to worry about getting anybody into a carseat–is that it’s the perfect environment for people-watching and taking in the magical moments of total strangers. We saw countless little girls dressed as Disney princesses, all sparkly from head to toe and brimming with excitement over, well, everything. Two sisters, about four and six years old, were leaning on the guardrail…