by Jody | Four-Legged Family, Human Comedy, Human Condition
We used to trick or treat with the same seriousness exhibited by big game hunters. Instead of safari hats and guns, we sported rubber masks and flashlights. We traded tips on which houses yielded the best treats, and which should be avoided as a waste of precious...
by Jody | Family, Human Comedy, Human Condition
My dad never expected to live to be as old as I am now, and I don’t think he was completely prepared for it. When he actually outlived my mother — for whom he had prepared for every possibility when she was “left alone” — he grudgingly...
by Jody | Human Comedy, Human Condition
Among the artifacts in my past life there are several entities I seldom examine any more: music lessons and dancing school, tennis and golf instruction, a private university and a sorority, and a country club. My memories of the country club are mingled with memories...
by Jody | Family, Human Comedy
She was everything I wanted to be in 1957 in the second grade. The only girl and the youngest child in a small-town Illinois family, Susie O’Dell had it all. The dresses with the matching stiff slips that kept her in a perpetual ballerina state, the lace-edged...
by Jody | Family, Human Comedy, Human Condition
We hit the milestone of 32 years of marriage, and wondered how that much time could possibly have gone by. I suppose any couple that has been married more years than they were old when they put on their rings wonders that. Our wedding was a very simple civil ceremony,...
by Jody | Family, Human Comedy, Human Condition
“The Welsh are dark.” That phrase has been spoken and followed by knowing nods in our family — when there were still heads to nod — for many years. My father’s mother, our paternal grandmother, had dimmed the light in her eyes by the time...
