Category: Across Generations

  • We’re Related Now (But I Still Don’t Know What to Call You)

    We’re Related Now (But I Still Don’t Know What to Call You)

    Now that we have in-law children, we also have in-law families: parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, both related and honorary. What we lack is an easy way to refer to all of them.  As I’m anticipating hosting the extended branches of our family for the holidays, I have teasingly called them “the in-laws and…

  • Food is Love and Cookbooks are Sacrilegious

    Food is Love and Cookbooks are Sacrilegious

    Lessons from an Italian Grandmother My Italian grandmother taught me that food is love. She lived ten minutes from us growing up and never came over empty-handed, so my siblings and I were the recipients of an awful lot of love. And it was all from scratch. I don’t know if cooking from scratch is…

  • Turning Outlaws into In-Laws

    Turning Outlaws into In-Laws

    Saying “I do” doesn’t immediately make you family.   Turning outlaws into in-laws isn’t easy, because marrying into a family and joining a family are two different things. Marriage is a moment, but joining is a journey. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon in our own family as the nieces and nephews begin to tie the knot.…