The Thanksgiving after my grandmother passed away, my family was too chicken to tackle a turkey. Yaya barely weighed more than a Butterball herself, yet she spent days preparing feasts for us, which we would gobble up before she even had time to sit down. In our Greek family, food was love, and Yaya loved […]

I saw the bag of my dreams at the Nutcracker Market in Houston one November.  Shaped like a miniature typewriter, with rhinestone jewels for the keys, and Once Upon a Time scrolled across the top, the purse twinkled at me under the fluorescent lights.  I ran my fingertip over the tiny beads, snatched it off […]

Summer officially arrived the day my daughter, Kristina, came home from college dragging a semester’s worth of dirty clothes behind her. She wanted home cooked meals and movie marathons on the sofa, soul searching conversations and the chance to sleep late in her childhood room. It was also the same day my husband went out […]

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My sixteen-year-old daughter is saving her toes for marriage. She announced this to me the day before she was to leave for Greece to attend a youth group camp at the Ionian Village. She had begged me for years to let her go on this priceless adventure to explore her heritage and discover herself. She […]

The morning before my birthday, I limped to the bathroom mirror and examined the face staring back at me, bleary eyed and tired. Getting older was nothing to be afraid of, I told myself, but my reflection certainly was. I tried to ignore the dark circles pooling under my eyes, and the tiny wrinkles crinkling […]

My daughter and I have a love-hate relationship. She loves to interrogate me at length about my past, her favorite subjects being my most embarrassing moments and the opposite sex. She lectures me on being an overprotective parent and tests how high she can raise my anxiety before I detonate.  She feels I should be […]

“His name is Kole.  His name is Kole,”  I repeated to myself silently, as the two got into the car and settled themselves comfortably, too comfortably, I feared, into the back seat. “Kole, Kole, Kole,”  I insisted under my breath. I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He looked nice enough with his shock of black hair […]

I survived my last birthday, and even learned to live with the pile of unwelcome gifts from Mother Nature, including roots that give Fifty Shades of Gray new meaning. Some of Her presents, after all, were as subtle as sweat in the middle of winter, and as tiny as the cluster of smile lines barely […]