childhood memories

On the street where you live

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‘Going down Memory Lane. Literally.’

Their Haight-Ashbury dwelling bursting at the seams with the addition of another objectively adorable baby, The Child and the SIL recently moved house. Which means that, so far, as a couple, they have lived in four different places.

Not counting the almost-year during Covid when they lived in this camper van (!)

This got me thinking about all the different places I’ve lived. I’ll start at the very beginning — because, as we all know from The Sound of Music, it’s a very good place to start.

I was born in Champaign (I love saying that out loud) where my Dad was getting his engineering degree at the University of Illinois. I’m pretty sure that, at the time, they were living in a room above a garage. There is additional family lore that my bed was a dresser drawer. Alas, there is no photographic evidence. (And, *sigh*, there is no one left to ask. See “Holidays on Edge” for bittersweet deets.)

This could be at the dresser-drawer place or, more likely due to my size, at “Vine Grove, Tuckey” (which is how I adorably lisped it)

But I do have a picture of my next residence. That’s it at the top of this post. The photo was in a batch sent to me by my Favorite Only Sister; written on the back in Mom’s handwriting is “Vine Grove, Kentucky.” This is where we lived while my Dad was stationed at Fort Knox. (He was in the Air Force.)

Chilling on the porch at Gramma’s house during my full-time tenure there

I don’t remember anything about that place, but I do remember where I lived next, because it was my Gramma Peterson’s house. We stayed there while my Dad was stationed in Korea. (How he got sent there is a pretty good story — involving secret papers and handcuffs — you can check it out at “Kissing Daddy Goodnight.”)

Mom (stage right) and me with the whole Peterson Crew: Gramma, Grampa, and my Aunt Marilyn, who was in high school and, of course, still living at home

After my Dad got back (in one piece, thank goodness) we moved back to Champaign and lived in a little bungalow in sort of a compound where a bunch of other glamorous-looking young married people had bungalows too. Everybody had little kids. I remember running in a pack following this guy Casey on his great big riding lawn mower. Heady stuff when you’re, say, four.

Mom and some of her many equally-glam friends

My parents had just built a little house — I remember it was painted blue — when my Dad’s company transferred him to Memphis. My mother was so unhappy. She told me that, during this period, she had absolutely no friends. Sorry if you’re from Memphis, but she said people were “friendly, but not your real friends.” Also, she got mistaken for a stripper. (Which, BTW, is an excellent story: “My Mom, the ‘Party Girl.'”)

Me in Memphis with the Cat that Never Had a Proper Name. We just called him “Kitty.” Oh — I have never been mistaken for a stripper *sigh*

Actually, I rather enjoyed the Memphis Years. I started school there, which is always a big deal, and had some cool adventures. Like, Elvis Presley called me a “cute little girl.” (Yup. You can read about that, too, in “The King and I”.) We lived in three places in Memphis: the big house near the college where we had a couple of college-boy renters, a ranch house somewhere where one of the college boys continued to live with us .(He roomed with my Middle Brother Roger, explained in “That’s My Bob”.) And, finally, we lived in a rambling place ever-after known as The House on The Lake. This place was memorable. My Mom found a snake behind the washing machine and another time a mouse ran up my brother’s pant leg.

All three extant Henry Kids gussied up for Easter outside the House on the Lake

This takes us up to 1960, when we moved to Carlyle, Illinois. This is where my Favorite Younger Sister and Youngest Younger Brother were born and where my family lived for the next — gasp — 47 years. The Carlyle Years surely deserve a post all their own.

Soon.

Amagansett, New York. August 2026.

My Gramanxiety Attack

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‘I’ve got the pre-grandkids-visit jitters’

I woke up this morning at 4:30 and could not get back to sleep. I was having one of those dreams where you’re trying to do something impossible and/or scary and are thwarted (I just love the word “thwart”) at every turn. In my case it was trying to climb down from a really tall tower — on a horse. (I’m really scared of heights AND horses). It was too late to pop a pill, so I got up and made coffee.

Well, looks like somebody’s not afraid of horses

And fretted. No, not about heights, or even horses. (A fear of heights is self-evident; my equine fear stems from horses drooling and peeing on me in addition to not paying attention at ALL to my feeble commands and running amok with me clinging to their manes and/or reins.)

Our other adorable grandson, Baby Too, sporting his big brother’s outgrown beanie (or “toque” as they are known in Canada)

My fretting had to do with the fact that my two adorable grandsons are coming to visit and staying for a week and two days. (Their parents are coming as well, but that’s not a fact that lessens the anxiety.)

I’ve discovered that this pre-visit anxiety is more common than one would think. Why, my friend Amy, who is one of the coolest, calmest persons I know, admits to feeling stress when her granddaughters visit. It’s not that we don’t know what to do with kids — Amy raised three of them — but it’s that we feel discombobulated with all the new parenting mores and folkways. (I’ve written about one aspect of this before: See “It’s a Good Thing This Baby is so Adorable” for a piece about the abundance of gear these babies require.)

The Powers That Be would have me arrested if I tried to reuse The Child’s crib. No can do, since long ago I gave it back to the person I borrowed it from

To prepare for this upcoming visit, I’ve already ordered another Pack ‘n Play (a portable crib that simply everyone has; I wish I owned Graco stock), plus a highchair. I’m thinking about getting a pail and shovel for the beach. And maybe some toy trucks. The Child on our last FaceTime call, broadcast from their Canadian Family Visit, after I noticed Mr. Baby playing with a couple of trucks: “Aunt Susan has lots of toys.” (Note: Aunt Susan has no children.)

Who needs toys? Mr. Baby has room to roam visiting his Canadian family

As for me, I can’t recall owning much gear. I do remember tying Her Childness to a kitchen stool with a bathrobe sash. A high chair seemed like a bad investment at the time. After all, we had just the one kid.

Having fun bathing just the one kid in our just the one bathtub

And. even more disconcerting than all the gear, there’s the difference in the parenting folkways. Way back when, it was the grownups that ruled the roost — or so it seemed at the time. It was “time for bath” and “time for bed” and, so heavenly,  “naptime.” Now everything is sort of kid-driven. It’s “he might get tired in the jogging stroller” and “looks like he’s hungry.” Speaking of “looks like he’s hungry”, there’s a lot of running-around-while-eating. Maybe I can send the highchair back. Although he’s getting his kicks while seated in one, here:

Thank you all for the opportunity to vent. I feel so much better now. I’m ordering some shovels and trucks the second I post this. Meanwhile, I know that, when all else fails, there’s bathtime:

Amagansett, New York. July 2026

“Is that…YOU?!?”

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‘On discovering a Fourth Age of Man.’

This very interesting New Yorker writer named Calvin Tompkins recently died. It wasn’t a sad, tragic death; after all, he made it to his 100th birthday last year. The reason I know about this is that he wrote a fascinating sort of “countdown to 100” journal that was published in the magazine a few months ago.

Here’s a link to the piece, which is well worth reading. But you need a New Yorker subscription to do so. Just in case you don’t, here’s the beginning:

“Old age is no joke, but it can feel like one. You look everywhere for your glasses, until your wife points out that you’re wearing them. I turn a hundred this year. People act as though this is an achievement, and I suppose it is, sort of. Nobody in my family has lived this long, and I’ve been lucky. I’m still in pretty good health, no wasting diseases or Alzheimer’s, and friends and strangers comment on how young I look, which cues me to cite the three ages of man: Youth, Maturity, and You Look Great.”

Me with my Mom. I had reached the “Sisters, right?” stage by the time this photo was taken

Now that’s the part I wanted you to see: Youth, Maturity, and You Look Great. I’m sorry to say that, even though I’m nowhere near 100, not only have I reached “You Look Great” … I think I’ve reached a whole new level.

Here’s the story.

Dude Man and I were hosting one of his nephews and his wife for the weekend. They haven’t been married all that long, and she expressed an interest in learning more about the Dude Family Line, which is, of course, her family line too.

Young Wife’s future husband is in this shot. And yes, that’s Dude Man behind The Child. But you knew that

So I obligingly got out some family photo albums. While paging through and pointing out Dude’s parents and sisters and brothers (including Miss Young Wife’s future in-laws), we came across this photo:

Dude Man and me on our wedding day. Note that Young Wife had no trouble recognizing His Dudeness

Young Wife took one look and said, pointing at my face, “Is that…YOU?!?” 

Now, let me give you a sec to absorb that. Try saying it out loud, remembering the dramatic pause and the emphasis on the word “you.”

She would most certainly not have recognized me here. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I do

I would argue that this remark totally tops “You look great.” And that it should henceforth be considered unutterable by anyone looking at a family photo. (You can think “Is that…YOU?!?”, but please please don’t say it.)

I give you permission to say it on gazing at this photo. After all, I am a toddler here

Since I adore this young woman, I cut her some slack. Though I did sweetly point out that she probably shouldn’t use this sentence again. I mean, unless the someone in the photo is in disguise or wearing a costume or in a scuba suit…well, you get the idea.

I’ll end with a very nice photo taken just a couple of weeks ago. In my humble opinion, all of us, admittedly, look pretty “great.” Though nowhere near Calvin Tompkins “great.”

Oldest Younger Bro Scott, Main Squeeze and me in the middle of Looking Great

New York City. April 2026

Water Babies

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‘Born to love the beach.’

Recently, I had the good fortune to spend some time with The Child and the SIL and their growing family. (They are expecting another addition in May. Also a boy — so we’ll have a brand-new Mr. Baby; the current baby is hereby promoted to “Mr. Kid.”)

Mom and Kid testing the waters. New Mr. Baby is in the shot too…just not visible (yet)

We did lots of fun things in San Francisco, but right up there at the tippy-top on the fun scale was our afternoon at Ocean Beach. SF was suffering though an unprecedented heat wave. (87 degrees!) So the beach seemed like a fine idea — even though it was mid-March.

Also in March — but not in 87-degree weather — Mr. Kid takes to the waters of Lake Tahoe

The Child had just purchased a protective swim outfit for Mr. Kid, but once he saw the water, he wrestled himself free from her outfit-changing hands and charged right into a nearby tide pool. So what if he got his sweatpants wet — he was ecstatic!

Ecstatic toddler, now clad in swim gear, charging around the tide pool

The Child was just like that when she was his age. I clearly recall her very small diaper-clad form lighting out for the surf every chance she got. Luckily for her, both Dude Dad and Grampa Whit were water lovers.

Dad and Grampa introduce the Baby Child to the water

Me, I wasn’t born to love the beach. I grew up in the very midst of the Great Midwest, and didn’t clap my eyes on a beach till I was darn-near fully grown. To be clear, I’m not counting the “beaches” next to lakes. They can be sandy, true. But the water adjacent to them basically just sits there; one does not learn about waves or tides or eddies, nor does one learn to respect the sea puss.

Me, enjoying the bathwater-like waters of Lake Carlyle. (But learning absolutely nothing about how to deal with oceans)

It takes an ocean to learn to deal with the ocean. Thankfully, over the years I’ve more or less gotten the hang of it, though I did learn some lessons the hard way. On my first visit to an Atlantic Ocean beach I was waving gaily to my batch of Ogilvy friends on shore when they got all wide-eyed and put their hands to their mouths in dismay: a giant wave was coming. It knocked me over and spun me around like a rag doll in a washing machine. I lost my sunglasses, my bikini top and my dignity. But I learned never to turn my back on the waves.

Yes, The Child has been fully waterproofed and oceanized from a very early age. Why, she’s practically a fish.

The Child demonstrating her Fish Face while modeling a Fish Head she made in school

Knowing The Child and the SIL, I’m sure the new Mr. Baby will also be developing gills. In the meantime, I’m sending happy thoughts out to the Coast.

Happy Beach Day, All!

Amagansett, New York. March 2026

A seat at the table

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‘Did you always sit in the same place at dinner?’

When I was a kid, my Dad had “his” place at the dinner table — and god help you if you sat in it. It was at the head, of course.

I honestly can’t recall where “my” place was — and I definitely don’t remember how our places were originally allotted — but I do know that each and every one of us five kids had a designated spot at the Henry dinner table.

Dad, at the head of the table, dispensing treats to Hermie and Roger. Roger had a “place;” Hermie didn’t. Unless it was under the table

Was this just a Midwestern Thing? Or a Midcentury Modern Thing? Do families still do this?

Dude Man and I had “our” places at our circa-1984 newlywed table

Even though my own personal nuclear family had just three members — Dude Man, me and The Child — we each had “our” spot at dinner. Our dining table was a rather large drop-leaf model. Our regular dinnertime default position was to sit along one side: Dude Man at one end, me at the other, with The Child smack-dab in the middle. (Breakfast was more casual; kitchen-counter catch-can. And lunch? Well, lunch was at work or school.)

Our dining table with flaps fully extended for a Tree Trim party (a festive tradition you can read about here)

Out in Amagansett, even though it’s usually just The Dude and me these days, we have “our” spots — which, coincidentally or not — are the same ones we started out with: two seats at one end across from each other.

The Amagansett table gets a workout at holidays, too. Pictured here: a post-Thanksgiving game of Schmeeg

Oddly enough, when Dude Man and I were on our recent Antarctic Adventure, people tended to sit in the same place at meals. The Dude and I liked the starboard dining room at breakfast with the self-contained Germans. At dinner, we liked the port side with the livelier East Asians. And yes, we usually sat not only in the same section, but in the same seats. If somebody else was sitting there, it felt…odd.

Some penguins dining ashore. That’s our ship, complete with two dining rooms, in the distance.

As far as I can tell, The Child and the SIL aren’t doing the Same Seat At Dinner Thing. Perhaps it’s a generational thing? Is having the same seat at dinner kind of like using a rotary phone?

For one thing, they eat out pretty often. Maybe they sit at the same table?

Because they have crazy schedules, there’s also quite a bit of grazing. Not worrisome (to them, anyway), since it’s supposed to be a good thing to eat when you’re hungry…not when it’s time. Sometimes, when visiting, I get odd looks when I ask what time they’d like dinner on the table. “Time? Table? I was going to go for a run later (!)”

Forget about sitting in the same seats — sometimes they don’t even sit

All of this, for me anyway, has taken a bit of getting used to. But I’m getting there. You know that old chestnut: “I don’t care what you call me, as long as you call me for dinner.” I guess you could amend that to: “I don’t care when I sit — or where I sit — as long as I’m somewhere near you.”

Relaxing our dining-table standards, one set of feet at a time

Amagansett, New York. March 2026

Holidays on edge

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‘Teetering on the brink with no buffer.’

You know that your Spring Chickenhood has expired when you open the Times and see a piece titled “This is the Year Millennials Officially Got Old.” Especially if the “old” millennials of your acquaintance happen to be your daughter and her friends.

My Aging Millennial in my mind’s eye

Heavy sigh goes here.

It’s not that this is a depressing notion. It’s more like it’s surprising.

I’ve mentioned (well, moaned and whined) before that I don’t mind getting old so much. My late lamented Dad felt otherwise. When challenged in his later years to, say, get up out of a chair, Dad used to famously mutter, “Don’t get old.” To which one of us kids would usually reply, “Um, Dad, what’s my other choice?”

The Child making sure my Dad’s head is not too old to stay attached securely

Nope, for me it’s not the getting old part I mind so much. After all, Equally-Old Dude Man and I are still up for gallivanting around the world chasing birds and adventure. (See “Channeling My Inner Shackleton” or “New Guinea was a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience” for examples of elderly derring-do.)

What I do mind is how much faster getting older is getting. It feels like I’ve just scoured out the Thanksgiving roasting pan and stowed it in the hard-to-get-to cabinet on top of the refrigerator when it’s time to climb on a chair and wrestle it down again. (When I can no longer do this is when I pass the Thanksgiving Baton on to someone younger and fitter.)

And when I can no longer do this, I’m hanging it up for good

But what’s been really getting to me lately is that, getting-older-wise, I no longer have a generational buffer. My grandparents, of course, are long gone. But also gone are oodles of aunts and uncles. My Dad was one of eight; my Mom was the oldest of five. All are gone. Even Aunt Marilyn, she of “A Very Marilyn Christmas” fame, is now up there in the Santa Land of the Sky.

Aunt Marilyn when she was a buffer in high school

 

Even Dude Man’s buffer has been wiped out. I have lovely memories of his grandmother, Elsie. But that’s all I have. Same with his parents. His much-beloved Aunt Eleanor, with whom we were both very close, (See “She Put the ‘Giving’ in Thanksgiving”) slipped this mortal coil a couple of years ago.

Eleanor celebrates the Big 9-0. She would celebrate eight more

But, even when everyone else was disappearing, there was always my mother. Until there wasn’t. (See “Beautiful Swan” for some bittersweet remembrances. Or “The One Time Families Get Together” for an account of her memorial weekend.)

Mom, surrounded by accolades at her Memorial

So now here I am. Teetering on the edge, and with absolutely no buffer. Good thing I’ve got this instead:

It’s rather nice being their buffer

Amagansett, New York. December 2025.

 

 

 

 

If you see my sister tomorrow, please don’t wish her “Merry Christmas”

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‘Wish her “Happy Birthday” instead, and watch her face light up.’

It’s tough having a December birthday. Everyone’s so gosh-darned busy decorating and caroling and partying that they tend to forget that some people actually celebrate their natal day this month. People other than the Christ Child himself, I mean.

Like my sister. Her birthday not only falls in December, it’s on December 18. Which means it’s exactly one week before Christmas Day. Talk about atrocious timing.

Baby Laura. Not celebrating her birthday, but looking extremely cute

To her credit, our late great sainted mother would make an appropriate fuss on Laura’s birthday, as she did for all our birthdays. I remember that we kids used to say that “Christmas was for everybody, but birthdays were only for us.” Having a special day — with its attendant special fuss — is important in a big family.

A bit of our family hullabaloo on a random Christmas morning. And this isn’t even all of our family

We’d get to pick what we had for dinner on our birthday night — I can’t recall any of us choosing liver — and we also got to pick what kind of birthday cake we wanted. My Oldest Younger Brother Scott always specified a birthday pie because he was fonder of pie than cake. (Yes, his pie was adorned with candles.)

Laura and our sainted mom on her birthday last year

But back to my Favorite Only Sister. This year she celebrates not only an Important Big Milestone year-wise, but she is celebrating being a grandmother.

(I simply must digress here. It is nigh onto impossible for me to wrap my head around the fact that my baby sister who, in my mind’s eye is about eight years old, is now a grandmother.)

Favorite Only Sister Laura as she appears in my mind’s eye

Yes, Laura’s daughter Natalie has a freshly-produced bouncing baby girl, little Sydney. This girl is the spittin’ image of her mama and is already not only extremely adorable, but extraordinarily chatty:

I think she’s saying “Happy Birthday, Gramma!”

So. If you’re lucky enough to see my sister tomorrow — or any time this month — please do wish her a very happy birthday. She will love it. Just don’t add that you’re going to get her “one big present” for both her birthday and Christmas.

Amagansett, New York. December 2025

 

 

Babies like balloons about as much as they like clowns.

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‘Which is to say, not much.’

There’s a reason that Stephen King puts balloons in his stories. Balloons are scary. They bob around in your face, they squeak,  they pop. If you rub them, they’ll even pull on your hair. 

Sometimes the balloons in the stories are being held by a clown. Which is, like, doubling down on the scariness. Why, even before Mr. King wrote It, I thought clowns were scary. Circus clowns, TV kid-show clowns, even McDonald’s clowns. All of them: scary. I honestly can’t think of a clown I find amusing. And I’m 73 years old.

Check out the expression on that girl right behind this clown. Maybe she’s hungry for a Big Mac, but does she look amused?

Being over 70 means I remember John Wayne Gacy. He was a suburban serial killer guy who liked to dress up as a clown and lure young boys to their deaths. I’m not sure how this worked, since, if I saw a clown as a child, I was the opposite of “lured.” At the very least, I would shrink away, if not outright run for the hills. (Fun trivia note: Lots of serial killers have “Wayne” as a middle name. You can read more about that right here in my story, “I’ve Seen Fire and I’ve Seen Wayne.”)

My childhood reaction to balloons was pretty much the same: a definite shrinking away, sometimes in tears. As I recall, The Child had a similar childhood balloon aversion.

I don’t have a photo of The Child being scared by a balloon, but I do have this one of her wearing a fish hat. Enjoy

So, imagine my surprise when Her Childness told me about an outing she and the SIL took last weekend. They went — with Mr. Baby — to an exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts that featured balloons. It was called “EmotionAir,” and featured many examples of what they call “Inflatable Art.” (Which, ahem, I call “balloons.”) Balloons you could blow up. Games with balloons. Rooms filled with balloons that you waded into and frolicked among. I can honestly say the photo they took of Mr. Baby surrounded by “Inflatable Art” is the only one I can recall seeing that features him not smiling.

See? Not crying…but most definitely not smiling

Well, so much for balloons. As far as I know, they haven’t exposed Mr. Baby to clowns yet. Well, except for one. As you can see from the video below, she was pretty funny. And she wasn’t even wearing a wig or makeup.

New York City. May 2025

Beautiful Swan

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‘Remembering Mom. With a story or two’

Perhaps you’ve heard. Perhaps you’ve heard about it too much. But, in case you haven’t heard, my mother died. On February 16, to be exact. I posted an obituary on FaceBook just last week.

I can’t figure out how to share the darned FB story, but here’s what it looked like

If you’ve lost a parent — or even if you haven’t  — I’m pretty sure you’ll understand that it can take a while before you can attempt to be amusing again. So I haven’t posted a story since my last one a couple of weeks ago, which, ironically, was about my last visit to see her. The one where we force-watched some line dancing. (It was called  “My Mom Likes Line Dancing About as Much as She Likes Yodeling” in case you missed it.)

Our last *sigh* photo together on my last Mom Visit

That post was pretty well taken up with line dancing and yodeling, and I ran out of room before I could share some Mom stories. Which I have a million of, as you can imagine.

So I thought I’d take a crack at sharing some. First up is a story that Mom used to tell. It has to do with a hair bow and some roller skates. (Mom was somewhat of a hair-bow expert. She used to tape one to the top of my follically-challenged two-year-old pate so that people could tell that I was a girl. And check out her young fine self rocking a hair bow in the photo at the top of this post.)

I keep that photo on a shelf at the Ken & Barbie House with other prized possessions, like the tiara Laura gave me and drawing by The Child

But back to Mom’s story. It seems that one Christmas, young Mom yearned for some roller skates. I’m not sure if an actual letter was written to Santa, but she told one and all that she wanted roller skates more than anything. And, sure enough, come Christmas morning, there was a heavy rectangular gift-wrapped box under the tree with her name on it.

Mom and Laura admiring the last batch of Christmas fruitcake. Well, unless Laura and Dave keep making it, which they probably will, having had plenty of practice these last few years (!)

Her Uncle Warren happened to be over at Mom’s Grandma’s house with the other aunts and uncles and cousins. (I remember Uncle Warren. He was missing an arm — lost in a farm accident involving, I believe, a baler — and used to give us kids little cubes of Chiclets gum he would squeeze one-handed out of the package.)

Anyway. Uncle Warren saw Mom handling the package, testing its heft for roller-skate-content possibilities, and said, “Hey, I bet that’s the hair ribbon you’ve been wanting!”

Mom enjoys a laugh…perhaps at one of her own stories

Poor Little Mom. She believed her Uncle Warren — even though the box was waaay too heavy to contain something as insubstantial as a hair ribbon — and burst into inconsolable tears. But of course, the package did indeed contain her roller skates, so all’s well that ended well, Christmas-morning-wise.

A Christmas featuring large collars, but no hair bows

I bet about now you’re wondering what the title of this post means. “Beautiful Swan?!?” (Well, Angica knows. Hi, Angica!) As much as I’d like to tell you that “Beautiful Swan” refers to my mother and her childhood bow-bedecked loveliness, it is, in fact, a card game. A card game we played at Laura’s kitchen table on my last Mom Visit. The game involves bluffing about the contents of your hand and is actually called “BS.” Which, of course, stands for “Bullshit.” (And it’s an actual game. I just looked it up!)

Mom in a kitchen, but not playing cards. This is when she met the SIL

A player declares, for example, that he or she is discarding two threes, and the rest of the table has a chance to say “bullshit.” Which means you are calling their bluff. If you are correct, and the player was bluffing, they have to take all the cards piled in the middle of the table. If they weren’t bluffing (er, bullshitting) then you have to take them, the object being to get rid of all your cards.

Mom at Mo’s, enjoying some chowder. But not playing cards. Though she certainly looks like she’s just won a game

The game is called “Beautiful Swan” at my sister’s in homage to her friend Lori, who wanted to play the game with her young children without exposing them to bad language. (“Bradley and Kaitlin, I’m going to teach you a card game called ‘BS!'” “What does ‘BS’ mean, Mommy?” “Why, “Beautiful Swan! That’s what it means–Beautiful Swan!'”) 

And Mom was ruthless and competitive and very very good at it. Farewell, Beautiful Swan. I’ll be back with more Mom Stories as soon as I stock up on tissues.

Mom looking beautiful — and rather swanlike — at Nephew Phil’s wedding

New York City. February 2025

If peeky toes are clams, what are toma toes?

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‘How I scored a swell tee shirt.’

So. A friend and I were driving to a luncheon on Shelter Island (I know, I know. That sounds pretty fancy: a “luncheon.” And it was. Each summer that luncheon on Shelter Island is about as fancy as it gets. For me, anyway.)

No, this wasn’t served at that luncheon. This is a punchline sandwich

But back to that drive on Shelter Island.

My Sagaponack friend (Hi, Amy!) and I travel together to this shindig every summer. Sometimes she drives; sometimes I do. It’s actually fun to drive to Shelter Island — and even more fun if you have a friend along. You get to take a cute little ferry, for one thing.

Plus there are lots of clever signs for little oddball businesses. I used to take The Child up through Shelter Island to get to the Big Ferry at Orient Point, which was her jumping-off place to get to the train that took her back to Boston, and school. And every time I made that drive, I’d swear to stop off at this one tempting little antique/junk shop next time. (Of course, I never did. Maybe next year, hey, Amy?)

Amagansett has some pretty clever signs, too, like this one. Does this mean that farmers are surfers? Or that surfers are farmers? All I know is that their stuff is so $$$, it’s like eating wadded-up money

Anyway. This time, sure enough, clever signs. We passed one that said “Peeky Toe Clams.” Of course that sparked a few snarky remarks: “Peeky toe?!? What’s a “peeky toe?” Is it like your foot in a flip flop? Oh! I see. It’s a clam. That sort of thing. Cut us some slack. We’re two ladies driving, cracking each other up.

We didn’t need no stinkin’ farmstand when we were kids. We had Dad

Well. Right after the Peeky Toe Clam sign we see another one. This sign is white paint on a big ole piece of barn board, and it says “TOMA” on the top, and then, right below that, it says “TOES.”

So, I’m all like, “What on earth is a “toma toe?” If a “peeky toe” is a clam, I give up. What’s a “toma toe?”

And, there in the passenger seat, Amy is laughing so hard she practically activates her air bag. Finally, she gasps: “TOMATOES!!!” It’s “tomatoes!”

Oh.

A big ole platter of toma toes and mozzarella

So. Amy and I get to the luncheon, where I simply must tell this story. After all, if you can’t laugh at yourself, then you’re kind of a sorry sort, right? And besides, if I didn’t tell it, then Amy was bound to. She and I regale our table with the Toma Toe Tale. And, a few weeks later, I’m with a bunch of these same luncheon friends when I’m handed a little shopping bag with a red ribbon on the outside and a red-and-white surprise inside. (Thanks again for the tee shirt, Wendy!)

Here’s wishing all of you friends like mine — and the best end-of-season toma toes you can lay your hands on. I’m having some myself, tonight. With my ham burger.

My favorite new grilling outfit

Amagansett, New York. September 2024