She always tried her best... but...

I am not a gardener. My mom was a gardener-- she had a green thumb, not just an olive green thumb, or even a grass green thumb, but a deep, lush emerald green thumb. Her whole life, even when she worked outside the home full-time, which was most of the time, she had a passion for her gardens. She grew trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, vegetables, fruits... you name it, she grew it: it flourished. She got this honestly; her mother, my immigrant Polish grandmother, was a gardener. I don't know if it was by necessity or by choice, but I clearly remember my grandmother's yard-- there was none. It was all gardens. She had narrow brick paths that wove through roses and herbs; she had concord grapes on an arbor in front of a small chicken coop. (I was afraid of those nasty fowls- they sensed it and chased me mercilessly until I found protection behind my daddy's legs while my mom and her mom talked gardening.) My grandma had vegetables galore and enough perennials (at the time I...

The family that my husband and I created is a family of writers… and I’m an editor. You can imagine the implications of that.   My daughter, who is 33, is an undergraduate Phi Beta Kappa who has a PhD in Literacy Education. She has to write academic, peer-reviewed articles based on her research; she loves to write personal reflections based on her life. It’s therapeutic for her. Her most recent foray into the “world of the pen” is blogging at " Twin Life- Having it All ." Ironic that in the 21st century, the “world of the pen” has nothing to do with handwriting.     But her blog explores the challenges of being a full-time working mom (one who is on a tenure track at a major university, with all that that implies), the mother of two year old twins (who are the proverbial apples of their four grandparents’ eyes, but at the same time, two year old twins), and the wife of a man who doesn’t quite get these challenges (which is not at all atypical). So my daughter writes, an...