I have always heard about spring cleaning, and now that it is spring, I feel guilty not thinking about spring cleaning. Then, ‘death cleaning’ appeared in my radar, and the first thing I thought of is that it is a terrible title! But it is a real thing! You get to a certain age and you start to automatically read obituaries. It’s not that you’re anticipating death, it’s just that what those dead accomplished in their life becomes interesting. In the New York Times, Obi

I met Cora Wen at the memoir writers’ retreat in Guatemala. There was something about Cora that drew me to her. Maybe it was that both of us came from immigrant families. Her energy is addictive. Cora was my therapeutic yoga teacher as well. We met at 7 AM every morning and she helped heal my broken shoulder, the Eastern way, and its excellent healing surprised my Western doctor. East and West. Much better when our lives – and our health -- are intertwined. Cora wrote P

As many of you may have experienced, when the first grandchild is born, you cannot wait to take them to the circus and other experiences. It is joyful to watch their eyes light up as they see things for the first time. And of course, you take them as soon as you can. We took our oldest grandchild when he was close to four. Please read the blog post, “ Of First Born Children and First Born Grandchildren: Benefits of Loving The First the Longest.” Especially those of you wai

In my family, eating a bagel for breakfast is a staple of our diet. On holidays, such as break fast after Yom Kippur ends, we celebrate by eating bagels. When I found out that there is a National Bagel Day in the United States, and bagel bakeries are now a big business everywhere here, I thought I would share the following with my grandchildren and all of you! What is a bagel? Bagels are ring shaped bread rolls, one of the few breads that are boiled and then baked, which crea

My mother, a Holocaust survivor and daughter of a Kabbalist rabbi from a small town in pre World War II Poland, had a unique outlook on life. It is not unusual that looking back on my childhood and younger adulthood that I realize now her wisdom was rooted in Kabbalah. I just did not know then. I wrote a previous New Year’s blog about my mother and feelings of gratitude. Rereading it reminded me of the wonderful generational life lessons she instilled in me every day that she

Within the last several months, I have felt a sudden compulsion to address the Holocaust in my life and write a memoir of how the Holocaust impacted my family and me. Until this point, I could not see movies about the Holocaust, I could not read books about the Holocaust. I could not deal with the Holocaust as a child of Holocaust survivors. This turnabout has perplexed me. Because of this new compulsion, I just returned from a Jewish Heritage tour to Eastern Europe, visited

His name was Jihad Al-Shamie. He was 35 years old and a British citizen of Syrian descent who entered the U.K. as a very young child, and...

This Grandma’s eighteen and nineteen year old grandchildren wanted a vacation in the Greek Islands and had no interest in Athens or the...

Having been a judge and a lawyer, I am a rule follower. Actually, I’ve always been a rule follower, so it was easy to be a lawyer and a...

When interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Warren Buffett, now 94 years old, was asked, “how did you know the day that you became old?”...

There are so many idea articles for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, so this Grandma tried to think of a few new ideas for 2025. Of...

Why is Japan the NOW destination? According to the Wall Street Journal, the Japanese yen has lost one third of its value against the U.S....

Why does this Grandma use the terms “rules and Regulations” and for “in-law parents”? If you, the reader, are asking, then you are new to...

My blog, www.grandmother-blog.com, has evolved over almost a dozen years, from just being about grandmothering, to grandparenting,...

After reading The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 6, 2023, article about ChatGPT, “The Robots Have Finally Come For My Job,” by Greg...

For our children and grandchildren, PopPop’s obituary was published in the Sun Sentinel, Sunday, March 11, 2023. It will always be on...

We grandparents are at the age when it is getting harder to say we are young. When age 80 is closer than I want to admit, although I work...

When this Grandma was a newlywed, decades ago, what to call your in-laws was a major dilemma. I did not want to offend my parents by...

I have addressed this issue before, and seems that it is time to address it again. Sometimes simple answers do not provide a complete...

As a family court judge, I served to dissolve tens of thousands of marriages over twenty years. Ethan Hawke (I had heard of him but knew...