• Living Vertically

    The Narrative We Choose

    My beautiful mother could cast a narrative of her life that’s very different than the story she actually lives out daily, and has lived for the last 50 years. She could wear righteous anger over betrayal and loss. She could carry that badge and wave it around, ever so subtly, to keep her place as a person who deserves more…

  • Living Vertically,  Our Kids, Our Family,  The Mystery of Marriage,  The Story

    Embarking on new adventures and finding our own old footprints

    Sometimes when we forge new paths, we find footprints we ourselves left decades earlier. Our family is moving back to Southern California from the serene and naturally beautiful Western edge of the mitten state. (Hold up your left hand.) I spent my childhood in Michigan, so I have a deep fondness for the lakes and the uniqueness of this state’s…

  • Living Vertically,  Our Kids, Our Family,  The Story

    Returning via Kansas

    They broke into the iconic harmony of Carry On My Wayward Son, and the nostalgia-hungry crowd stood to their feet. Of all the 70’s bands touring the world right now, presumably because they are managing some equation of “need” and “want”, we find ourselves at the Kansas concert. Really? Kansas? Eldest sister saw Aerosmith in Detroit and OH! how I would have…

  • Our Kids, Our Family,  The Story

    The Undeniable Pivotal Impact of Fathers

    Monday Morning. I couldn’t get this out yesterday. Fathers Day. In this week, I read two letters from two brothers, sons of the same man: one with joyful, gushing feelings of love and admiration for his deceased father.  The other with deep hurt and life-long damage caused by “a s— of a man” that needed to be painstakingly healed as a…

  • Living Vertically,  The Story

    BLUE LIKE JAZZ

    It finally came. Like many, I followed closely as my best-friend-Don (who I’ve not yet technically met actually in real person face-to-face) struggled and amazed everyone with the whole GET IT TOLD process.  The BLJ book, the other book about the making of the movie, the funding of the movie, the almost not movie …. (inhale) and now the public…

  • Living Vertically,  Our Kids, Our Family

    Scandalous

    It seems like a good day to repost this. I got caught shoplifting when I was 18 years old. I know, I know.  REALLY late bloomer.  The security guard’s cold hand clenched my left wrist as I attempted to leave the store without paying for the pair of jeans that hid in my bag.  The crime took place in a Hudson’s…

  • Our Kids, Our Family,  The Story

    1971 Might Have Been Perfect

    I love everything about this picture. Must be 1971.  Beverly Hills Village, in Birmingham Michigan. Most of our clothes were made by fabulous-mom.  I know the skirt Annie’s wearing was originally part of a full set of Singer-crafted, floor length Christmas “gowns” for each of us. I’m wearing an ultra-hip, extra-wide, cherry-red Jan Brady watch.  Alice’s culotte-jumper was likely  made out…

  • Living Vertically,  The Mystery of Marriage

    Committed Dreamers

    Maybe we should be committed.  (hmmm… does it negate the “committed” part if we say “maybe”?)  Scratch that; let’s keep going. Saturday: Today we have a two-hour drive to Riley’s weekend volleyball tournament, and we accept the opportunity to ponder yet another transformational life-moment.  This week we made some key decisions. We settle into the truth that both Steve and…

  • Our Kids, Our Family

    This Year’s Story

    Every Thanksgiving has story, right? And sort of a character all it’s own. Thanksgiving 2011 did not let us down.  My brother Mike and his wife Christine hosted their first Thanksgiving in their wonderful home; and with the size of our family, the commitment is daunting.  It starts with a tentative [timid] email to 40 people, presenting the idea of…

  • Living Vertically,  The Story

    The [Way] Back Story

    A train from Detroit to Chicago in 1955.  A transatlantic passenger ship from Liverpool to Ellis Island in the same year. Each of these simple, everyday passages carried a young, scared teenager who would soon come together to establish life’s direction for another generation of people. Today, I can touch the words that were entered on the ship’s log as…