Just a reminder that this Saturday from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. is the fourth annual Women’s Night Out in Bucks County, PA. Check it out at www.whwcoactive.org. I’ll be speaking on an author’s panel. Please come by and say hi!!
16 Changes to Make Right Now to Make Divorce Easier on The Kids
iVillage has an excellent article posted on 16 Changes to Make Right Now to Make Divorce Easier on The Kids and yours truly weighed in on the topic of dating after divorce, including introducing your significant other to your kids and dealing with your ex’s new love life.
Accept that your ex will date — and you will, too!
Bringing new romantic partners into the picture is a huge change for kids, so many parents wait until they know the new boyfriend or girlfriend is a keeper to introduce them. (A general rule of thumb is at least four to six months.) “Reassure your kids that this person will never change your love for them,” says Ellie Slott Fisher, author of Mom, There’s a Man in the Kitchen and He’s Wearing Your Robe and It’s Either Her or Me. “Your relationship is too strong to be affected by anyone.” When kids meet the new guy, pick a fun place and hold off on the PDA. Is your ex dating too? Remember that no person will take your place as their mother; so avoid the urge to pry. Instead, let your kids make their own judgment about the new woman and make nice. “The best way to deal with an ex dating is to take care of yourself, look fabulous, and act overly pleasant and solicitous in his or her presence,” adds Fisher.
Click here to read the full article.
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15
Sep
2010
Sep
2010
Tis the Season for Marriage
Weddings usually involve brides and grooms, and when there’s a groom there is more often than not, a mother; the one person at any wedding who isn’t all that sure of her role. How much is too involved, and how little is too little?
I ran into a former student of mine who is in the throes of wedding planning. He’s one of four boys and the first in the family to get married. Not having any daughters, his mom wants to be involved in the wedding planning – the planning, not the paying. She’s given her son – and by extension, his fiancée, – a list of songs to play, a list of her friends to invite (at the couple’s expense) – and suggestions how to decorate and what to wear.
Not surprisingly, the fiancée is having no part of the mother’s intrusion.
My suggestions?
To the groom’s mom: Be very selective in making requests. If it’s most important that you have certain friends then ask for that. But choosing the music, the flowers, the colors, the clothes is a decision left to the bride and groom. Presumably, you had your turn.
To the fiancée: If you’re not feeling the love, then give his mom a pass for one year (longer if you have the patience). Let her get to gradually know you and like you. Without compromising your own wishes, excuse everything she says or does and let her son know that he has one year to help her see what a good person you are. Seriously, it’s too easy to let any poorly directed and ill-conceived comment wear a hole in this relationship. One that’s impossible to mend. But if you can let it go – like we do when a girlfriend disappoints us – at the end of the year, you may find bygones will be bygones and you’ll start the relationship from scratch.
The reason for this is that most future daughters-in-law are ready and willing to like their boyfriend’s mother. But many mothers aren’t quite ready to accept this new No. 1 female in their son’s life. Eventually, most of these moms will come around. But until they reach that point they may say or do something the fiancée will find hurtful and annoying. These moments get locked into our memory and just when the mom is ready to open her arms, the daughter-in-law has firmly folded hers.
To the groom: You don’t get a pass. Your job is to make sure your fiancée doesn’t take to heart anything your mom does while making sure your mom continues to improve in her efforts to trust and like your mate.
14
Sep
2010
Sep
2010
English 101
I teach. I teach the dreaded English composition course all college freshman are required to take. I know that every semester I will face business majors, nursing students, art majors, computer programmers and a litany of other students whose course of study appears to have little need for writing.
I feel for them. I really do.
But then I ask them: If you can’t use proper grammar, put together a sentence with correct structure and syntax, use a vocabulary with words larger than the ones required for texting, will you impress a prospective employer? A professor? That cute girl or guy you meet in a bar? (Really, they get THIS). And G-d bless my students, they sit there and listen. I think they hear me. Either that, or they’re silently mocking me as still stuck in the dark ages. You know, the era of the now extinct Thank You Note.
Of course, I beg to differ. I’m a relationship expert and as such, I know that nothing will sink a relationship faster than a poor choice of words. If you tend to limit your vocabulary to four-letter words, (beyond l-o-v-e) well, that ought to do a lot for your marriage. If you shun any form of reading or writing or speaking intelligently because you’re happy to substitute all noise forms with guttural belching, especially when you’re in front of the TV, that will do wonders for your relationship, too. Guaranteed.
Conversely, the man or woman who writes or speaks meaningful, thoughtful and loving prose – especially if it accompanies a shiny object (men and women have different ideas about what a shiny object ought to be) – will earn enough brownie points to sustain his or her relationship at least through a month’s worth of dirty laundry and snoring.
Most likely if you’re reading my blog, you’re not one of my students. (If you are, don’t forget the reading assignment for Friday.) But I hope you, too, will keep on writing. Especially as well-written newspapers continue their vanishing act, and fewer literary works are published by publishers.
In fact, anytime you feel like talking, drop me a line. Or two.
30
Aug
2010
Aug
2010
Beach Neighbors
The beaches in Cape May, New Jersey are lined with sky blue tent-like cabanas, each one with a fairly crude piece of wood painted with the renter’s last name. These tents in one form or another have dotted Cape May beaches since Victorian days. I rented one for 30 years until the cost became prohibitive two summers ago. My late husband Charlie and I had viewed our tent neighbors as our summer friends.
In the early days, our neighbors included a beautiful middle-aged widow from Pittsburgh, Mrs. Murrow, who summered in a double-porched Victorian gem. We also met an outgoing Virginian couple – The Lawsons – and another couple – the Reddys, who had two kids a few years older than ours. But as life changes, so did our little tent neighborhood.
I may have brought the first change, returning the summer of 1991 and breaking the stunning news to my neighbors that Charlie had died less than a week after returning home the previous summer. He was 42.
Then a few years later I showed up with a new husband, and a couple years after that, I showed up with no husband.
The Reddys moved their tent to a more secluded location (hopefully having nothing to do with my dating habits). Unfortunately more tent neighbors sprung up around them. Then Mrs. Murrow stopped coming to the beach because her macular degeneration became too debilitating. However, she continues to rent a tent on the diminishing chance her adult grandkids will show up and take her to the beach. They haven’t.
And then there’s Mrs. Lawson. I remember when she and her husband would wave to Charlie and me, and then, when she too became widowed, she and I became next-door neighbors, so to speak.
Although a generation or two older than me, I was always in awe of this striking, Grace Kellyish elderly woman with blonde hair, a perpetual tan, and flamboyant costume jewelry that unfailingly matched her bathing suit. One day we discovered that we had both graduated from Lower Merion High School outside of Philadelphia.
We talked about similar childhood haunts and then she told me she had a surprise that she would bring to the beach the following day. There she was sitting in a chair under her tent, sporting a much shrunken wool sweater emblazoned with the words Lower Merion High School, each letter an individual wool appliqué, and smelling vaguely of mothballs.
Last night I returned home from Cape May, not having seen Mrs. Lawson’s name on a tent all summer. Earlier, I drove by her summer house. A “For Rent” sign stood on the lawn. By my calculations, based on the year she graduated from LM, Mrs. Lawson would be about 85. I hope she’s well.
It’s nice that I still see the Reddys – in the water as they keep watch over their grandchildren. But I miss the old neighborhood.
23
Aug
2010
Aug
2010
