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One night I was sitting at my desk, contemplating the very mundane task of either moving my tired body to the closet to grab my math textbook or jumping through the hurdles of pulling up the textbook online. I chose the latter, clicking through my teacher's information page, clicking the website, clicking the textbook and clicking on the page number on the little box at the bottom of the screen. Clicking, clicking, clicking. And all my lovely hard work was well worth it as I...
Once upon a time, in the good old days of analog, I could do no wrong. In fact, some said - mostly me - that I was the King of Analog. Yes, as the song goes, "Those were the days." During those dear old analog days, I was smarter than all my kitchen appliances. And they darn well knew it. Yes. I knew how open the fridge, turn on the stove and even use the oven without a YouTube tutorial. Now, all my kitchen appliances are smarter than me. My fridge knows when I've left the...
"So, make the friendship bracelets. Take the moment and taste it," my newly minted 13-year-old sings along as we string tiny colorful beads and letters on elastic. "Yeah, Mom, that's my favorite line," she claims. (Yes, this is a column full of love for Taylor Swift. So, if you're a hater, who's "gonna hate-hate-hate," apologies. You probably "need to just stop" - reading, that is.) The way my daughter starts the statement off with "yeah" makes me smile. It's as if she thinks...
It was a benevolent stand-off. Me and my dog, Dakota, and a doe and her two fawns. We startled each other into a frozen sort of bewilderment. After what seemed to be a forever stare-down, mom and her babies faded away into a wooded camouflage. Return visits to the place of the stare-down have yielded more surprising and beautiful encounters with wildlife. Great egrets and great blue herons stand lifeless in a river waiting for bluegill to present an easy meal. Familiar ground...
When the children in our family were going through their toddler years, our uncle would often repeat, "Need help? Just ask!" I thought the idea was to teach our little people to ask for help before their frustration escalated into overwhelm. Asking for help doesn't always come easily, whether you're a child learning to put on your shoes or an adult juggling responsibilities. We live in a culture that values independence, busyness, hard work and self-care. Asking for help can...
I have always hated getting shots, COVID, flu - and I am sure I hated getting the chickenpox vaccine when I was young, too. Flu season would come around, and I would push off getting the shot until the leaves on the trees had curled and crisped and crumpled on the ground and the air had a hint of winter breeze. When I was younger it was the pain that scared me, but also the second of anticipation right before the jab. I like to think I am a lot less scared now, but that...
Ahh ... that's better. The good old prefrontal cortex. Where would we be without it? Pretty much brain dead; that's where we'd be. The prefrontal cortex is the region of the brain responsible for planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision-making and moderating social behavior. But why empty it? And how would you even do that? You might not be familiar with this process as I identify it here. You might know it by other names - writing, painting,...
The last time I wrote an article for the paper, I was headed off to study travel writing in Prague, Czech Republic. Two months later, I can confidently say that my time abroad was life changing. While I was in Prague, I experienced gratitude and excitement for life like never before. I formed connections with the other students on the program, and we all went from strangers to friends in no time at all. I made memories that will live in my mind forever- swimming in a pond at...
You'd be hard pressed to find Buncombe, Illinois, on a map. Buncombe is a five-hour drive straight south from Hinsdale as the crow flies, as my dad would say. I dreaded visiting Buncombe as a kid. In the early 1970s there was nothing there. Miles and miles of farmland interrupted by old farmhouses and grain silos. Maybe an occasional Stuckey's along the way. My paternal grandfather grew up near Buncombe before he made his way to Chicago in 1920. However, a few distant...
This summer while browsing in a used bookstore in Michigan with aisles upon aisles of books stacked floor to ceiling, I stumbled upon a devotional entitled "100 Days to Brave." I'm not sure what drew me to this particular book. Perhaps these days we all need a nudge toward courage, a boost out of our comfort zones. Picking it up, the jacket read: "For the next 100 days, let Annie F. Downs show you that you are braver than you know, and with that knowledge in your back pocket,...
I wrote a column for The Hinsdalean in 2018 called "Superhero Moms and Dads" that was about all of the many cool things we do for our kids as they grow up and how we parents should feel like superheroes because our kids see us that way. It's been about five years since I wrote that article. My husband and I are about to send our firstborn off to college and see our younger son begin senior year of high school. Seemingly overnight, we've gone from superheroes to ordinary...
Lately, no matter where you look, it’s Barbie, Barbie, Barbie. The hugely popular new “Barbie” movie has scores of people writing and speaking a name that is so deeply rooted in the mid-century that you probably can’t think of a single baby named Barbara. Not now, and more than likely, not in the past several decades. That doesn’t matter, though, because the movie has made my name (at least in a diminutive form) and the toy that also bears it wildly relevant again. And that...
When your child leaves for college, there is plenty of advice on how to handle the transition, ranging from gentle comedy to true grief counseling. It is an adjustment period for the whole family. What no one warns you about, though, is when they come back. By the time I went to collect my oldest this past May for his first summer home, I was desperate just to have his physical presence in my orbit. It had been months with no visits or breaks. My inner dialogue was manic....
Recently I was having a conversation with a mom of two school-age kids. "Only 10 more weeks until school starts!" she said, already feeling drained with near constant summer activities and endless questions asked by her daughter. I nodded my head, because I vividly remember those days, running after three little boys and counting down the hours until my husband came home from work. I reminded my friend of the saying, "The days are long and the years are short," a cliche so...
"Soy un perdedor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?!" If these lyrics from Beck resonate with you, you might be the father of a teenage boy or the mother of a teenage girl (or someone in need of clinical assistance). It's true - I am the dumbest, clumsiest, most thoughtless and annoying person on the face of the earth. I know because I've been told so (maybe not as directly) many times. What makes my flaws even more apparent, though, is a series of events. For...
Saanvi: To our entire Red Devil nation, thank you for joining us today to celebrate the Red Devil class of 2023. Fatimah: Honestly, none of it would be possible without the help of our parents, teachers and the D86 staff. Not to mention Google Translate, Photomath, Sparknotes and, our very new addition, ChatGPT. Saanvi: Are you forgetting something? Fatimah: Oh right! Both: The Devils Roast. Saanvi: We’ve had a good four years. Fatimah: Well, more like a good two years. You can’t forget when our two-week break turned into a w...
Another school year has come to an end, and another summer has begun. Every single summer I’ve spent in Hinsdale has felt like a variation of the same thing over and over again — a cup of coffee and reading on the porch in the mornings, long walks around town in the summer heat, working at night, hanging out with friends and the occasional vacation. Every single summer has been wonderful in its own way. But this summer, I’m looking for something different. Luckily, diffe...
The question recently overhead in a Hinsdale boutique wasn't meant for me but I could have answered it. "When do you leave for Europe?" I didn't catch the answer because I was on a mission. My implausible dream: Find chic attire that could lead to my being mistaken for someone fluent in something other than a Southeast Missouri drawl while traveling in - yes - Europe. Given multiple news reports on the high demand for transatlantic flights, perhaps Hinsdale boutiques are...
"When the student is ready the teacher appears. When the student is truly ready the teacher disappears." - Lao Tzu I love that quote. Aren't we all students making discoveries about ourselves and the world throughout our lives? We are if we're awake. I know I've learned a lot since becoming a parent some 23 years ago. I don't normally get all philosophical, but I was trying to think of ideas for this essay when I passed by Peirce Park and saw Little League season has begun....
My mother immigrated to the United States from England by way of Greece just a few years before I was born. My British heritage meant my childhood was steeped in tea with a splash of milk and a generous amount of sugar. Sick, lonely, ordinary, celebratory and tearful days all called for a cup. This custom lent a stabilizing habit that followed me into motherhood. A few weeks after the birth of my first child, I called the doctor in a fit of new mother nerves, explaining in a q...
Here we are in April again, friends. The temperature is warming up (shhhh, this week doesn't count!), birds are nesting on my front porch and the Silberberg family calendar is bursting at the seams. Some entries are mine or my husband's but the majority belong to the 4-feet-and-under contingent of our crew. First there's education. Pretty standard, as times and locations have been unchanged since August. Add baseball, T-ball, soccer and basketball, all with games and...
Every year for Lent, I try to challenge myself by giving up something that has too much of a hold on my life. This year, that was Tik-Tok. I anticipated that it would be difficult - that's why I gave it up - and that I would feel out of the loop on trends, new music and other people's lives. What I didn't expect was to not miss it at all. And after going over 40 days without Tik-Tok, I've happily decided not to re-download it. Although I have always preached my disdain for...
We humans think a lot of ourselves. And rightly so. After all, unlike other species, we can contemplate the past and look forward to the future. We humans can talk in actual sentences with distinct and nuanced words. All you other species, what have you got? Quack, quack. Oink, oink. Bah, bah. Tweet, tweet. Come on, you, you — animals! And how about quantum physics? Any chimps or crows or dolphins thinking about that? Huh? Our greatest human minds can’t figure it out, of cou...
Our house is a very fine house. When we moved into our split, it was a compromise of sorts. The house - around 50 years old - was not new, yet not really old. Instead, it was affordable and fixed up. Nice and new to us. No weekends would be spent rehabbing. A compromise because I'm an old house person and my spouse a new house person. Give me quirky layouts, stairs in the kitchen, musty smells from summers past, spirits left behind. My husband likes pristine. Fresh paint,...
I recently stumbled into a conversation about faith, my palms sweaty, my heart pounding. We were about to break the unspoken rule of dinner gatherings: no discussion about politics or religion in this cultural moment, the risk of offense is too great with ever-present land mines that will cancel you out of the relationship. But there we were, seated on the couch, while the dessert was plated and the kids' voices rang around us. I listened as we sipped our drinks and my friend...
