Sisterhood of the Travelling Shoes

If you are young, and by young I mean under 70 years, this post probably won't resonate with you. In fact, you will likely find it difficult to get past the title. If you've made it this far, however, I urge you to keep reading because this will inevitably apply to you. The sad truth is we all get older. The happy truth is that often we get wiser and hopefully end up in the "I don't care" stage of life. Allow me to elaborate.

In today’s whirlwind world of social media, it is so easy to endlessly scroll through meaningless content and immerse oneself in ridiculous trivia. I am no exception. And so it was that I recently happened across an interesting article titled “Irish Citizenship Through Ancestry.” Well that caught my eye and I clicked. To my surprise it is apparently possible to claim Irish citizenship if one has a grandparent born in Ireland. Hmm, I have a grandparent born in Ireland. The mind boggles! And the mind is now on overdrive. I am compelled to investigate further. Initially, it seems to be a deceptively simple process. Of course there is documentation to…

Once our children had families of their own, we established a rotation of sorts so that we could have our whole family together every other Christmas. This worked especially well when grandchildren were young and travelling the almost 1000 kilometres between our households was a big undertaking. We did this for several years and then COVID hit and extreme weather hit and airline cancellations hit and to make a long story short we have not been able to get together with our whole family at Christmas for a while. But not for lack of trying… *x#?&* COVID As everyone knows, on the first Christmas in the throes of dealing with…

Never in a million years did I see myself writing about cars and driving, but recent events have had this topic in the forefront of my mind. You see, we are now the proud owners of a new van, not so exciting in and of itself, but the journey to get there was like nothing I ever expected. The Fun Bus Back when our first grandchild arrived we thought purchasing a van might be a good idea so that we would have room for all the grandchildren we thought were sure to come. So we did just that and over the next several years more grandchildren did arrive. As time…

We all face different challenges in our lives, but Big and Little Sis have one in common. That is the challenge of, well quite frankly being 5 ft and 5ft 3" respectively, in a world that is 5ft 5.” Even when we wear heels it doesn’t help, we still can’t reach the top shelf at the Grocery Store.

It is a generally accepted principle that Grandmothers are "the best." (Full Disclosure: I am a Grandmother) But this post isn't about me. It's about our Grandmother, Lena Matilda, better known as Tilly.

Our Dad often signed business memos with his initials H.A.S., hence the title of this post. His handwriting was beautiful and somewhat embellished. In fact, a handwriting expert might predict a strong, decisive personality and that would sum up Dad perfectly. He was very intelligent and our family "Go To" for problem solving. We often said that he knew a little bit about a lot of things. He was also what we would describe as "quirky."

This is a story about a table, yes, a table- the one you see my grandchildren using for their chess game in the picture above. It is a beautiful solid wood table of the kind you don’t see much any more and that you certainly wouldn’t find at IKEA. It first belonged to our parents and after their passing now belongs to me. Before you start wondering what more one can say about a table, the real story here is about what that table represents and the memories that are attached to it. We Bought A House After many years with his company, dad received a promotion which involved a…