The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: family

  • First Things First

    I take pride in having my sh*t together, but if I’m honest, I haven’t really had it together in quite some time. I’m not quite sure when I lost all sense of organization, but it was, oh…decades ago? Because of that, when the occasional crisis happens, as they do, I tend to feel extremely overwhelmed.…

  • Another Story–About Saying Yes

    I told yet another story at my local storytelling group, Fresh Ground Stories here in Seattle, Washington. I’m becoming addicted to this group and all the wonderful people in it. I never would have imagined that I’d take to standing in front of a group of 150 people and exposing my soft underbelly, but there…

  • One Crabby Family

    During one of my recent “weekends” (Oh, to actually have it fall on a weekend, for once, but nooooo…) I went with my first Seattle friend to visit her parents in Port Townsend, Washington. What a gorgeous place! I’ll write about it tomorrow. For today, I want to write more about what interested me the…

  • I Wish I Were a Huxtable

    I am hardly one to describe the perfect marriage. I appear to be terminally single, and heaven knows I’ve never witnessed a perfect marriage outside of television. But if I ever were lucky enough to be in a good marriage, I’d want it to be just like that of Clair and Cliff Huxtable on The…

  • My Own Personal Dallas

    The other day I had a unique opportunity. I attended a friend’s extended family gathering. The thing is, no one there knew me except my friend, and they didn’t realize how much I knew about their family dynamics. I’ve been friends with this person for decades, and he confides in me. I know all the…

  • Mandated Joy

    For those of us who struggle with depression, the holidays can be a particularly challenging time of year. In any other season, the thick blanket of painful sadness, when it descends, seems almost like a natural, albeit unwelcome part of the life cycle. Friends and family find it easier to avert their gaze, and we…

  • Sealed Without Your Consent–Mormon Ordinances by Proxy

    The LDS Church performs a wide variety of ordinances, some of which are called saving ordinances, which they believe are required for salvation. One such ordinance is called sealing, and it seals you to spouses and other family members for all eternity. Fine and dandy and more power to them, I say. Everyone is entitled…

  • Social Identity: Tribalism meets Individualism

    After the most profound heartbreak of my life several years ago, I decided to go on the most bizarre rebound I could conceive in this electronic age of ours. I went into the virtual world of Second Life, found the one person who was as unlike me (and as unlike the person who had broken…

  • The Immigration Issue in Reverse

    Yesterday I wrote about the many circles of hell the average woman on this planet has to pass through. Believe me, this is not the first time I’ve contemplated this topic, and at one point I was doing well enough to consider trying to help. It’s the personal stories that get to me the most.…

  • Our Expanding Family Tree: Cousins Coming out of the Woodwork

    One of the largest and oldest organisms on earth is Pando, a Quaking Aspen clone in Utah that covers over 106 acres. Looking at it, you’d assume that it was just a bunch of individual trees, but it’s actually one organism, and it’s thousands of years old. We didn’t know that until recently. I think…