I live within the NYC limits so you can guess at the amount of noise I hear every day. All day. And night.

The police precinct is a few blocks away and the firehouse just past that. Three hospitals serve my area, too, so ambulance response time is quick. We have two airports nearby and a train practically next door. Add city buses, cars honking at the traffic light on one corner and stop sign at the other, and it’s a wonder people in my neighborhood stay sane.

However, think about that scene in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil where John is spending his first night in a beautiful and balmy Georgia. The windows are open. The curtains are blowing. But for John to sleep, he needs noise. A city boy through and through, he turns on a tape recording he’s made of NYC streets and the sounds become his lullaby.

So, I wonder, if I were to leave the city, and land in the center of a quiet oasis, would I be content or uneasy? Would I feel peaceful or paranoid?

I think it would be nice at first. Free space to breathe, stretch, lounge and soak up the quiet. But I also think the newness of that would wear off quickly, and I’d wind up looking over my shoulder way more often than I do here at home.

What about you? Are you where you are because you want to be or because it’s where you’ve landed? And, given the choice, would you stay in the quiet or hectic area you call home, or can you see yourself comfortable in the opposite atmosphere?

Yesterday, as trick-or-treaters came to my door, I noticed how the youngest eagerly held up their goody sacks then cautiously said, “Trick-or-treat.” Almost all of them said, “Thank you.” Some even wished me a happy Halloween or a good night. Most took one bag of chips from the huge bowl, but some hesitated, unsure what to do because I’d stuffed fake – scary – rats in among the assorted treats.

Some… grabbed as many as they could with nary a please or thank you.

I’m exaggerating.

ONE trick-or-treater did this and he was at least 15 years old – perhaps older. I couldn’t tell. His “costume” was a bandana over his nose and mouth, like a bandit.

It’s sad, really. Not that he took FOUR bags of chips in his huge greedy hands, but that at his age, an age when he’s close to adulthood, he’s that greedy, that arrogant, that ‘entitled’.

It’s also sad that with all the adorable and well-behaved kids that came around yesterday for treats, the one who behaved less than stellar is the one who stands out – like the class clown, the class screw-up, the class diva.

Why we’re wired to note and record bad behavior is a puzzle to me. Shouldn’t we dismiss those who act poorly and give thought and time to those who treat us well? Who are polite and considerate? Why is it, I wonder, that acting out – being the noisy wheel that gets the oil – is the attention whore, while good behavior, which should be commended and shown as appreciated, is shrugged off because it’s how it ‘should be’?

You car may run great – for example – but instead of taking it in for regular maintenance, we wait until it acts up. Bad behavior gets the attention. Good behavior is ignored. Maybe we need to show more appreciation for the good things people do. Maybe then, we’ll see more of it – even if there’s no more of it than before.

Mornings like this, dark, damp and chilly, remind me of nudging my daughter awake, telling her not to dawdle but to get ready for school. She’d stumble, bleary-eyed out of bed, hair a knotted mess, shoulders slumped, breathing still slow as if she could fall back to sleep right there on the way to breakfast.

Somehow, we always managed to get her to school on time – JUST in time, perhaps, but in time.

This morning, as I slowly rose and stretched, I had to smile. The sun had not yet risen. The sound of tires on wet road and the feel of a slow but constant cool breeze through the open window made me grateful that time of waking my daughter, pushing her to get up from a warm bed, was long gone.

As homeschoolers, we’re fortunate to be able to set our own schedule. I worried when we first started the process that we’d fall behind. Become lazy. I overcompensated for that possibility by continuing the regular school routine. I actually used a chalk board and timer so we’d cover lessons in the ‘proper’ amount of time. I was a stickler for the rigid learning schedule on which we’d turned our backs.

I did that because I was unsure of myself. Other homeschooling moms told me to relax. To allow

Photo courtesy of Rancho Sahuarita Homeschool Club

my daughter the opportunity to set her own pace. I thought, judging from the way she stumbled from bed each morning, letting her set the pace was not the best idea.

I was wrong.

Children are amazing creatures. Eager to learn – living to learn – and with a drive we as adults cannot fully understand.

It took several months, but I finally backed off, giving my daughter room to explore. To my amazement, she did exactly what I was told other homeschooled children do. She began studying on her own. Setting her own pace, opening her textbooks and getting assignments done without my help interference.

Homeschoolers are often looked at with disdain. I understand to some degree since we are rule breakers. We’ve stepped out of the conventional routine and now march to our own beat. Since the beat is different for everyone, our routines appear to be without order. Perhaps they are. But then each child’s learning style is different and so, the unsteady, freestyle rhythm of our lives gives us the opportunity to learn and grow at an exciting and quite interesting pace.

My daughter chose to give up more than half her summer this past year in order to complete two high school grades in one year. I watched her rise later in the morning than she would for public school, but also witnessed her diligence, her accomplishments, her pride in herself and her work. I would have missed all of that if she’d been in school. And, perhaps, it never would have happened. She grew to understand what she needs and enjoys in a learning process but has also modified those wants and needs to fit what’s required.

I’ve talked about homeschooling before and will no doubt talk about it again. It is not for everyone. For us, for our family life, it was the perfect option and in coming weeks, I’ll give you a hint of some fabulous experiences homeschooling has provided.

In case you are not a regular follower of this blog, I ask you to view my original post about the Ghosts of Gettysburg, as that will anchor you into my tale. The experiences I had with my daughter and a friend were as real as the experience I have now as I type. Of course, some of our experiences were solely personal and could not be documented. Other experiences were captured on film and digital recorders and I included some of that “evidence” in my last post, which you can find here – Ghosts of Gettysburg.

If you’ve already read that first post, you should know a lot has happened since then. I’ve had the chance to listen to more recordings and view more images and have discovered more images – some in the photos I’ve already posted. Debunking some evidence has been easy in some cases and rather difficult in others. I have some recordings that sound intriguing but after hearing the same moment from my daughter’s or friend’s recordings, we realize there is nothing paranormal about them. Despite the evidence we feel is indisputable, disregarding or disproving any of it is a disappointment. Alas… as is the saying, “When in doubt, toss it out.”

For the evidence we believe to be accurate – we can start by having a look at the photo below. It’s from an early morning trek into Reynolds Woods. Originally, I saw two ghostly images in it – one on the path walking toward me, the other crouched in the brush toward the front left. It wasn’t until I looked at the image with a fresh eye, that I saw yet a third ghostly image in the same photo.

Here is the original picture with the two images indicated:

Now here is that same image with the discovery of the third ghostly apparition:

In my last post, I mentioned our experiences with temperature fluctuations in The Wheatfields. Well, I’d left my camera in the car so I don’t have photos from there but I do have an interesting recording. I didn’t hear voices while I was there, but on playback, I heard what sounds like mumbling as we speak and then through the silence, I hear something sad – a man whispering, possibly praying… using the words: “Help me.” “Take me.” “Hey.” Each plea is made a few seconds apart with “Help me” at :18, “Take me” at :21 and “Hey” at :26.

Can you hear them? (For a fuller experience, you might want to use headphones)

Ghosts of Gettysburg – Voices in the Wheatfields

To move on with our experiences… after all of the experiences we had throughout the audio/auto tour of the battlefield, which I described in my last post, we went back to an area we had been the night before during a commercial ghost tour. This was a small field behind the Jennie Wade House. Jennie Wade was the only civilian killed during the Battle of Gettysburg. She was baking bread for the troops when a stray bullet ripped through the door and pierced her heart. She died instantly. There are ghost tales about her and her home, but I’ll skip all of that and tell you about the field behind the house since that is where we had several personal – and intense – experiences.

According to our enthusiastic, intriguing and lovely tour guide, Kendra Belgrad, some Confederate soldiers who were outnumbered in this spot by Union soldiers, chose to play dead rather than fight. On retreat, the Confederate soldiers who did fight ‘captured’ these men, called them cowards and said they would never have a hero’s burial but would instead remain in the spot where they failed to fight. The fighting Confederate soldiers then murdered the ‘cowardly’ soldiers and buried them in that field. It is said ghostly images are constantly captured in that field. There are images of orbs, of heads peeking around trees and of men leaning against the trees and holding their muskets.

These are the images we hoped to capture the evening after our auto tour. And we did capture them. Almost immediately.

Once on the field, I turned my camera toward the tree where a lot of activity has been reported. I took a few shots and noticed a red ‘glare’ in them. I’m a photographer’s wife, so I considered the first flare to be simple reflection of tail lights from cars parked in the lot beyond the tree. However, in each photo, the red glare was in a different position. First next to the tree “peeking”, then just around the tree’s edge and then more toward the center of the tree. I looked at each digital image as I shot it and on the fourth or fifth shot, I was stunned. So stunned, that when I glanced at my daughter, the expression on my face scared her into insisting I not tell her what I saw.

What I saw in that startling image was what looked like a soldier who had just been shot and had slammed back against the tree. His hat looks like it tipped down over his face as he slumped back and the red glare is on his shoulder – perhaps where the bullet hit.

Admittedly, the image is dark. I did not use flash and the area was back-lit by the hotel and streetlights. Still… if you look closely, you should be able to see what I saw here:

Here is the shot immediately after the one above – notice the soldier image is no longer there:

Perhaps they’ll both be easier to see here:
He’s here –

but not here (in the very next shot):

A few minutes later, in a different spot of the field, my daughter’s K2 readings went wild. K2 meters register high magnetic fields. The meter flickered throughout this experience but registered noticeably seconds before our friend said she felt as if someone was standing right between her and my daughter. I fired off three shots and the first one shows a soldier standing precisely where she said she felt a presence. The other two shots show nothing.

I’m pretty sure this one will be very easy to see:

In case you can’t see him, here he is:

Of course, we captured a lot of orbs and other questionable images during our time there. I don’t know enough about orbs to say whether what we caught were spirits, bugs or some other natural phenomena. But… here are a couple of our orb photos and a couple of possible ghost images:

Odd mist in only one of four images:

Orbs:

Outline of man in mirror (Jennie Wade House):

Here’s that last one cropped and indicated:

Ghost? Nah. Just me sitting on a hero’s lap.

Don’t think this is it. We captured more voices and suspicious – or should I say “curious” – images and sounds. Here we were walking along Cemetery Ridge when we came upon some black walnuts lying on the ground. As we discussed them, there’s a long labored sigh then a very clear – stern – male voice seems to say, “Open!”. Not sure why he said that but, from his tone, he expected his order to be obeyed. Listen here…the ‘sigh’ happens as we’re walking at :08 and the ‘Open!” is at :15 ,right after I ask, “Are they edible?”

Ghosts of Gettysburg – Voices – Sigh and “OPEN” at Cemetery Ridge

In my last post, I mentioned how each of us felt uncomfortable at Culp’s Hill. I posted audio of what sounds like the hammer of a rifle/musket and a voice saying, “Whisper!” as my daughter speaks. There are a lot more sounds – some clearly voices – from that spot and I’ll post another one here. It happened as we walked along an unsteady incline on our way further into the woods. Listen as my friend says she hears something and feels like she’s being watched. You’ll first hear my, “Ooo!” as I slip on an wobbly rock, then you’ll hear the drawn out whispered voice talking over us at :04 -

Gettysburg Ghost Voices – Culp’s Hill – GET HOME

What do you think it says? We hear the words, “Get home!”

I’ll wrap up with two more experiences – in my next post.

One experience is something I cannot prove. I can only say all three of us endured it at the same moment, sharing our perceptions in real time and noting how each of us knew what the other was going to say before it was said. The experience was that vivid to us all. The other is one that just might make a believer out of the most skeptical among us. It made a believer out of my husband… and since he’s a photographer and our ‘proof’ is on video… that’s saying a lot.

Until next time…

I’ve neglected this blog through August but have good reason. I’ve been vacationing.

My family had much to celebrate this summer. My fifteen year old graduated high school and was about to celebrate her Sweet 16. As a combination gift, as opposed to a party, she asked to visit the Harry Potter attraction at Universal Studios in Florida and to go ghost-hunting in Gettysburg. We did both (and more) and had a phenomenal time. So phenomenal, that I couldn’t bring myself to break up the action by posting here. My bad… but oh so good.

I’d love to share all the details of Disney’s Magic Kingdom and Universal’s Harry Potter, and maybe I will. Eventually. But our trip to Gettysburg was so incredible I must share that first.

We arrived in the Historic area of Gettysburg around 4pm on Monday August 29th and we left on Thursday, September 1st, around 1pm. In that short time, we had one spirit experience after another. Some of our experiences were physical – feeling pressure, like being submerged. Feeling intense fear or complete peace. Feeling cold – freezing cold. And even feeling as though we’d walked through spider webs. None of that can be proven. Each event was a personal experience we will always remember but cannot document.

However… we have photographs and voice recordings that prove, to me at least, that what we saw, heard and felt was indeed something from another realm.

Wednesday was our biggest day, the day with the most activity. It started in the early evening when we visited an area of the Dobbin House that had been part of the Underground Railroad.

As we climbed the dark, narrow stairs to the attic, we saw a cupboard cut into the wall which once held pottery and stoneware. Behind that cupboard, in the attic crawl space – no higher than four feet, no wider than 20 and with no windows – runaway slaves were hidden. We walked up a few more stairs and entered the main attic – with 8-foot ceilings, windows… and another door. To another level. I opened that door to peer in and immediately jumped back in fear. I cannot tell you why. I didn’t see anything and I didn’t hear anything. I simply felt an unbearable dread that left me wanting to crumble to my knees and sob.

It took all my strength and resolve to go back to that door and slip my digital recorder into the opening. I felt a strong cool breeze on my hand, but heard nothing until I played back the recording. I am convinced the breeze was simply an attic breeze and nothing more. However, I cannot explain the voices captured on my recorder.

Listen for yourself… there is talking that can be explained. I was with my daughter and a friend. It is their voices you hear ‘mumbling’ in the background. But listen closer. At 14 seconds in, see if you can hear a whimper/cry of fear. Then at 21 seconds, listen carefully for a man’s very low and cautious, “Hello?”, immediately after that, at 24 seconds, is the whimper/cry again. THAT was not from us.

And yes, the voice at 3 seconds saying, “I can do this. I can’t do this. Okay, I can do this.” is Gemini me working up the nerve to open the attic door again.

Ghost Voices – Dobbin House

After we left the Dobbin House, we went back to finish an auto tour of the battlefield that we had started the day before. It was nearly 5pm when we reached Culp’s Hill. A short trek into the woods gave each of us a feeling of being watched. It wasn’t a good feeling. I didn’t feel it as strongly as the others. At first. Then suddenly, I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. At one point, before I high-tailed it out of there, my daughter, who had walked ahead of us, started heading back toward us. I knew she was behind me but heard footsteps coming from somewhere on my right. We were in the woods. Could be rabbits, chipmunks, snakes or any other animal. I shrugged it off. THEN, from the same spot, I heard what sounded like the hammer of a rifle being pulled back. It wasn’t loud but I heard it. On playback, that sound is right against the recorder – which was in my hand. A few seconds after that, before I acknowledge hearing the sound, my daughter starts to speak and a ‘voice’ says, “whisper”. We did not hear that voice until playback later that night.

It’s all in this recording – “rifle hammer” at 10 seconds and “whisper” at 18 seconds – see if you can hear it:

Culp’s Hill – Ghost Gun and Voice

We spent about an hour at Culp’s Hill and moved on to the next Battlefield location – The Wheatfield. The Wheatfield was the scene of a horrific battle – not that all battles aren’t horrific. It is said that more than 4,000 men died in the Wheatfield and that if a person wanted to cross the field, they could walk across without their feet ever touching the ground. That’s how many bodies of men and horses covered the area. Heartbreaking.

We had an experience at the Wheatfields that we cannot prove – though I haven’t listened to all of the recordings yet and there are still more photos to look through. However, my daughter went to one area as if drawn to it, and set out all of her equipment – Camera, EVP Device, EMF Meter, Ambient Temperature gauge – and then she stood up, moving back and to her left. Only thing is, as she moved, she raised her right foot as if stepping back and over something. We asked why she did that and she said she didn’t know. I took her temperature gauge and did some readings. The air around us was about 80 degrees. The air in the spot she stepped over was 25.

We spent a solid amount of time in the Wheatfield then moved on to the next stop – the site of Picket’s Charge. As we listened to the audio CD for the auto tour, I gazed out at the sky. The sun was setting and it looked beautiful. I took a couple of pictures then noticed a sliver of moon to my left. As I was about to photograph it, I saw movement in the brush. Like someone popping their head up to get a quick look around. That scared the begeebers out of me but I quickly aimed my camera and fired off two shots. One of them, to my eyes anyway, shows a group of Union Officers having a pow-wow. Can you see them?

How about now…

We left the battlefield soon after this because once the sun set, it was too easy to lose our way along the unlit paths.

We had several more experiences that night but if I write about all of them here, this post will go on for pages. For now, I’ll leave you with a few more photographs and a promise to post more about our experiences next time.

Can you see the soldier walking along the path – straight toward the camera? Or the soldier kneeling in the left hand bushes?

See them now?

You’d have to look REALLY hard to see the ghostly images in this picture. Trust me, I know, because I did just that. I saw not only a couple of soldiers walking, but one in the woods (possibly) and a closer image – in color no less – of a Union soldier’s face. They’re all boxed so you can find them easily:

And one more for today and that’s it, I promise:

No. No ghosts in that last one. Just the three  of us playing dress-up.

My soon-to-be sixteen-year old is just days away from finishing her high school studies.

As a homeschooler, she’s free to decide when she’d like to do her work – mornings, weekends, evenings – as long as she puts in the required amount of hours and covers the work we’ve outlined in our correspondence with the district’s homeschool director. To my amazement, my child has chosen to continue her schoolwork long past the end of the traditional school year. She has worked steadily since last September and has managed to complete two grades in that time.

I say this because I’m extremely proud of her. I also say this because, while we’ve been homeschooling for five years now, I’m still awed by the freedom, choices and possibilities associated with the process.

This is not for everyone and I would never say homeschooling is the BETTER option for everyone. I will, however, say it has been not only a better option, but the BEST for my daughter and my family.

Her traditional elementary school was wonderful. It was hard to let our little girl go there each day without us. Harder to know she was experiencing new and wonderful things, and we weren’t there to see the light in her eyes as she ‘got it’. But, it gave her a sense of confidence and independence that we admired. Add to that the warm, nurturing environment that was her elementary school, and it was – and still is – hard for me to see how homeschooling could be better or give her more.

In middle school, everything changed. The hours upon hours of homework after a full school day did nothing to help her ‘learn’ the subjects, but rather made her want to just “get it done”. Her friends were as overloaded with homework and projects as she was and so they barely saw each other. Homework was worse on weekends, as if the school had a policy declaring children should not be permitted any free time, ever.

The teachers were no longer nurturing. They were like drill sergeants. I get that tweens can be unruly and you have to maintain order. But I truly believe they’ll grow and learn better when treated with respect rather than contempt. I think of the bees-to-honey scenario.

It was the exhausted broken spirit I saw in my child that prompted me to, finally, make the move I’d considered when she was just three years old. Homeschooling.

It has worked for us in ways I could explain page after page. I will sum all of that up by saying my daughter had choices. She chose to work and to work hard. There are no ‘grades’, there is no competition, there is no principal’s office or hall monitor. There is only one child, one teen, doing her personal best because that is what she wants to do.

She’s fortunate to have had the best of both. I’m fortunate to have had the ability to provide that for her.

Have you made life or life-style choices for your children that could have gone either way? What were they? Given the same circumstances, would you make the same choice again?

From word one, writers are told, “show don’t tell”. It’s a method of letting the reader see and feel the character’s emotions, their wants, their needs. It’s not an easy bit of craft to master since “telling” is so much faster – and easier – than showing. To ‘show’ means to get into the character’s skin. To feel what they feel and describe it in a way that will, hopefully, elicit that same feeling in the reader.

Show don’t tell. It makes sense in fiction but what about reality?

Sure, few of us would refuse flowers and candy on Valentine’s Day. And I doubt any of us would object to a gift and gushy card on our birthday. But… isn’t that a form of telling? Wouldn’t you rather wake on a morning other than Valentine’s Day or your birthday and find the laundry washed, dried and folded? Or the empty milk container rinsed, recycled and replaced by a full container with a fair expiration date?

When you think back on special moments, consider this… are they special because of what someone said to you or because of what someone did to you, with you, or for you… without being asked? It’s not that we shouldn’t say I love you, or I need you, or any other endearment, but that we should say them and show them, now, while we can, so that later, if events take away the opportunity to show those we love how much we love, they will already know.

I thought of this today as I drove my daughter to her volunteer position at a living history museum. I blasted the radio as I drove home alone, singing along with some classic songs. Then one came on that I’ve heard many times but didn’t ‘get’ until today. As a writer, I’ve learned a lot from songs – especially how to break a story down to its core. I’ve admired the way songwriters can tell an entire, passionate story of love and heartbreak in three minutes or less. Today, however, I learned something else… that showing the feelings of a character, or a real live person, takes much more than words.

It was just over a year ago when my 95 year old Sicilian grandmother passed away. I blogged all about her and her impact on my life here. But something I don’t recall mentioning was her cooking. And man, could that woman cook.

I guess I took it for granted that she would always be around to make her exotic, healthy, quick and complicated meals for us. I mean, for my entire life, she was there, living in the same house. The aroma of her food wafting through the rooms. Eventually, the ingredients and steps for some of her signature dishes were etched on my brain but they will never quite taste, smell or be like hers.

More than a few of those are still in my head, not on paper. It wasn’t until I read Christine Ashworth’s blog, Artichokes are Silly, that I realized I should write these recipes down so my daughter has them and can pass them down to her children, proudly saying they belonged to her great-grandmother.

To honor that decision, I’m posting one recipe here. I promised Christine I would share it but I have to caution you, there’s one ingredient that cannot be duplicated. One ingredient that adds depth to the flavor and memories to the experience. That ingredient is grandma’s love. Which I miss terribly but am so grateful to have had for as long as I did.

Enjoy this. It’s a lot of work but worth it.

Stuffed Artichokes

Ingredients:

three artichokes – trimmed and washed

1 1/2 cups unseasoned breadcrumbs

1/2 cup grated cheese (I use equal parts of parmesan and romano but you can use your favorite one)

3 garlic cloves diced, or 1 teaspoon garlic powder or 1/2 teaspoon pressed garlic in tube

1/2 – 1 teaspoon crushed dried parsely

1 tablespoon capers (some brine is fine)

black pepper to taste

4 cups vegetable or chicken broth

Secret ingredients:

1 – 1 1/2 teaspoons sundried tomatoe paste (Amore brand is the best, IMO)
and
1 1/2 teaspoons olive paste (if you can’t find this, it can be omitted. It just gives an extra flavor zip but won’t be missed if you haven’t had it before)

Directions:

Cut thick stems from bottom of artichokes until they can sit flat on platter.

Cut about 1-inch from top of artichokes and discard. Use scissors to snip and discard all sharp leaf tips.

Gently spread leaves open and rinse under running water until cleaned – just spread leaves as you rinse so tiny fruit flies and such are rinsed away. Disgusting, I know, but I once found a live caterpillar in an artichoke as I was cleaning it. Better then, than as I was stuffing or eating it. :-S Fill pot with water, invert artichokes and let soak to clean.

Drain artichokes.

In a large bowl, combine rest of ingredients except for the broth. Using about 1/4 teaspoon (more for larger leaves, less for smaller leaves) ‘stuff’ each leaf with crumb mixture. Breading should sit at the bottom of each leaf. Do not overstuff or it will become too dry.

Place artichokes in large dutch oven, pour in enough broth to rise about 2 inches from bottom of artichokes, reserve remaining broth to add as needed. Bring to a boil. Lower to a light simmer, cover and cook for 40 minutes or until leaves separate easily from globe. Be sure to check level of broth regularly. If too much evaporates, either add more broth or some water (water will obviously reduce flavor so make extra broth your first choice)

Using a large ladle, scoop each artichoke with broth into a bowl.

To eat – pull each leaf and eat only pulpy bottom part with breading. When you reach the sharper inner leaves (usually bowed toward the center like a bud), pull them off as one clump and discard. Remove choke with spoon and enjoy the ‘heart’ or very bottom of the artichoke, which is always our favorite. Another favorite part of this is the scrumptious taste of crisp Italian bread dipped in the broth. Delicious.

I hope these directions were clear. I do this by memory and so I know the ins and outs of it but have never detailed it for others who may not be as familiar. There is a way to remove the choke prior to stuffing these, but I don’t know it. If anyone else does, please share.

Nothing would make me happier than if some of you make these part of your holiday traditions. I know, my grandmother would be all smiles in heaven.

Enjoy!

Homeschooling in New York City may seem like a rarity but it has become quite the movement. Even I, a native New Yorker, originally thought of homeschooling as something done in more rural areas. Instead, many New York families have chosen to pull their children from public school and use the vast wonders of the city as their classroom. There are museums, science labs, historical sites, various cultures and cuisines. So much, that years worth of curriculum could be covered without traveling beyond a few subway stops.

“Great. But what about socialization?”

That question is the first in everyone’s mind when I mention homeschooling my teen. It’s a logical concern and, before we started the process, we wondered about it ourselves.

Recently, I was speaking with some new friends about homeschooling when the issue came up. I answered, saying how there truly isn’t much socialization in school during school time. The comment was met with amusement and I found myself confused. Then I realized that, of course, there is interaction in school, but is it really socialization?

Socialization according to Answers.com is “(psychology) The process whereby a child learns to get along with and to behave similarly to other people in the group, largely through imitation as well as group pressure.

Hmm. “Learning to get along… though imitation as well as group pressure.” Not sure I like that definition.

Let’s try another… from the FreeDictionary.com: (Psychology) Psychol the modification from infancy of an individual’s behaviour to conform with the demands of social life

“conform”. Well. I’m not sure how I feel about that either.

One more… from Meriam-Webster.com: the process by which a human being beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status.

Ah. Now that works for me. “Acquiring… through accumulated knowledge of society through education and training.”

No “imitation”, no “group pressure” and no “conforming”.

For many homeschoolers the difference between the first two definitions of socialization and the final one is monumental and is, indeed, the difference between socialization through public school versus socialization through homeschooling.

Most often, children in school interact with children their own age. Occasionally, there is interaction between grades but it is usually limited. They pick up on each other’s habits – both good and bad – fashion trends and attitudes. Homeschooled children regularly interact with children of all ages as well as with adults. During spontaneous and/or organized activities, the older kids in the group will look out for the younger kids, engage them and play with them. Not all the time, of course. Just enough to give the young ones a sense of comfort and security and the older ones a sense of responsibility, belonging… and independence. The kids often hold conversations with adults as well – parents of other homeschoolers, or, as in the case of my daughter, customers in our family photography business.

The socialization aspect of a homeschooler in this new millennium is a wondrous thing. Here in the city, there are thousands of homeschoolers and many belong to local homeschool groups. Curriculum is recommended and shared. Activities are organized and varied. Interaction with others is part of life and learning.

Of course, homeschooling is not for everyone. Some children might find it restrictive and suffocating, while others might find it exhilarating and liberating.

For my family, the words “exhilarating” and “liberating” hardly begin to describe the wonder that the process of homeschooling has brought to our lives.

I’m curious. What are some of your first thoughts when you hear a family is homeshooling? Or… if you’re a homeschooler, what are some of the reactions/responses you’ve received from people when you discuss homeschooling?

Today “would have been” my grandmother’s 96^th birthday and I can’t help but again think of dozens of woulda’s coulda’s and shoulda’s. If she were here, I would have made chocolate chip cookies to celebrate. I should have done that last year but went for store-bought cake and ice cream instead. I could have put the extra energy into her 95^th and made it something we’d all remember for our lifetime.

But then… I do remember the store-bought cake and ice cream. I remember the meal, and her sitting at the head of the table. I remember her acceptance of our gift – and ‘acceptance’ was about as good as it got. I remember her asking me to make her a cup of tea so she could see how much better the new microwave was than the one she’d had before. So, I guess it was a good day.

She’d started to say all her days were the same. That’s never a good thing, and though she wanted to be part of our day, and share our experiences, she just didn’t have the drive to do so any more. She wanted to want to spend time with us outside of the house but no longer had the energy. She was tired and I have to accept that, though it’s hard when I consider all the escapades of my youth and her younger years.

There are too many to detail. Some make me cry as they make me laugh. She drove. Got her license when she was in her 50’s. She had a green Pontiac and once, when I wanted to photograph the sunrise on the beach, she said she’d go with me. And she did. We planned it out – two secret agents on a mission. She lived downstairs from us and was ready with her keys in her hand when I met her in her kitchen at 4am. By 4:30, we were on the beach, squealing at the sight of a beach rat, huddling close, giggling like kids and running along the dock to get away from it down there on the sand. And then we sat on a bench. And waited for the sun to rise. I still have the pictures I took that morning and when I look at them I see the whole thing – not the sun coming up but the fun. The moments. So simple. So special. And fleeting.

And so today, I will celebrate a life that made mine so much more colorful than it would have been otherwise. In her honor, I made something I should have made for her at some point. It’s a treat that, until recently, she made very year for the holidays. Struffoli or “honeyballs”. While she made bowls and bowls of them, I’ve only made one. And in making that one I was reminded of the staying power of that woman. The chutzpah. The energy. I’d never be able to make as many perfect little dough nuggets as she – each browned identically to the others, perfectly matched in size and shape. So when I look at my one bowl I see her, standing at her kitchen counter, rolling the dough into shoestrings, cutting them – thousands of them – frying them, piling them into bowl upon bowl. I see her with brown hair, slightly darker brown hair, grayish hair. White. Changing but always constant.

My one bowl looks somewhat like hers yet something is different. Something is missing. I suppose it will always be that way. We’ll have them tonight to celebrate the life she shared with us and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get up at 4 tomorrow to watch the sunrise. Though I know something will be different, and something will be missing from that moment too.

Otherwise known as rejections or the big “R”.

As a writer, I know rejections come with the territory. Writing is such a subjective art that to expect anyone else to ‘get it’ is presumptuous at best, arrogant at worst. But to hope… well, that’s another story.

As a writer, I’ve written stories that intrigue me. I’ve developed characters about whom I care. I’ve given them twisted backgrounds a company of therapists would vie to take on. And I’ve allowed those characters to find themselves, face their pasts and forge new outlooks and relationships in the form of happily ever after. I’ve upped the stakes for them, hoping to challenge them in every way possible without tipping to farce, in order to show how life, from th

e outside looking in, is much easier to live than from the inside looking out.

Too bad I can’t apply that same vision to myself. For now, I sit with a long-in-coming rejection. One I’d imagined would never arrive. I thought this was ‘it’, the big break, and that from here my writing path would be free of at least one obstacle. I would like to look in from the outside but, when I try, I only see hours, days, months, years of working toward a dream that has yet to come true. I can only wonder whether I’ve invested too much to stop now, or whether I’ve invested too much to bother investing more.

I always pose this question when a rejection comes through. And I always seem to overcome it with new energy, new determination. New characters and stories. Now? I don’t know. I guess I can’t speak for what will happen or how I’ll think in the coming months. But at this moment, I can only say it’s time to turn over, fluff the pillow and find myself a new dream.

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Today marks three months since my trip to Colorado to be with my Grandmother before she passed away. I didn’t make it there in time to see her or speak to her. I’ve been told by well-meaning people that it wouldn’t have made a difference. She knew how much I loved her and that was enough. Or that she didn’t want me to see her that way and just knowing I was on my way was enough for her. Or that she was comforted by the fact that I’d have family around me when I learned of her death. Or that saying goodbye, or hearing me say it, would have made leaving that much harder for her.

The last thing I’d want to do is make anything harder for anyone – most especially someone as ill as she had been. But I wonder if I didn’t need to have a difficult time of it for myself. To suffer through the moments before she passed. Showing up after the fact let me off too easily. Like closing a book after the story is read. Difference being, you can always open the book again to revisit moments that touched you. I can’t do that with my grandmother. Yet there are so many moments I’d love to revisit.

Grief is a disastrous thing. It makes you physically ill. Mentally absent. Emotionally unpredictable. But grief is also a gift. A tribute to the one who has passed. It’s the pain, the yearning for one more conversation, one more hug, one more shared and knowing glance, that reminds us of how much we had and how special it was. It should also remind us not to take anything for granted again, and maybe it does, though I’d bet for only the briefest of times.

Something else comes to us in grief. A sort of wonder. My grandmother lived nearly a century and yet it wasn’t until after her passing that I was able to connect with moments of her past. Moments I wish I’d known about earlier – moments about which I should have asked when I had the chance. It was while lovingly handling her precious belongings that the important or life-altering moments of her life became more apparent. A small leather purse with a handful of war rations. A newspaper clipping siting her as recipient of the Employee of the Month Award in April of 1945 – a clipping where she had crossed out her carelessly misspelled name and printed it properly with pen. Rosary beads. Photos of family. Birthday and mother’s day cards my mom, my sister and I had given her over the years. Tenderly crafted and delicate doilies, bedspreads and tablecloths. Intricate crochet samples created from her own imagination. Stunningly beautiful treasures without value yet priceless to me.

We gave away much of what she had. We wanted people who needed it to have it, use it, and appreciate it. We also packed some of what she had in boxes – things too precious to give away, too absorbed by memories of her use to be used by us. Those things will not be forgotten in those boxes, but preserved, remembered and always connected to her.

Three months have gone since my trip to Colorado to be with my grandmother before she passed. Three months since I lost her. Three months have reminded me of what I had – a buddy. A wonderfully comical, witty, sarcastic and caustic little wonder who loved me for who I was, not caring to change me in any way, who accepted me as though I had not a flaw. Or at least, that’s how she made me feel. Like I was perfect. And for her, I wanted to be.

I ache to not have been there to tell her again that I loved her. I ache to have been miles away, to have stopped for a cup of coffee instead of going straight to see her – those minutes would have made all the difference. But I ache more because of how much she shaped my life – as a child, a teen, and a wife, mother, granddaughter.

I hope in my time of death, I am reunited with her and that she still believes in me. I will strive to make it so.

For Grandma. My riceball. My buddy. My Sicilian pain in the ass. I love you.

I cannot say how sad I am to have seen the end of 24. I’m going to miss the tortured and tragic Jack Bauer. I’m going to miss the upright, uptight and downright loyal Chloe O’Brian. And, in truth, I’m going to miss the stress-induced asthma attacks and nausea of this show’s high-stakes and intensity-riddled plot.

In fiction, we’re forced to suspend disbelief. Many times during 24’s eight-year run, we did just that. Sometimes naturally, and sometimes as a sacrifice to the greater good. Yes. That means not all of it was believable… by any stretch. Yet, we remained loyal fans, knowing, in the end, Jack would grip us by the throat and take us along for the ride we were there to enjoy.

In the years since 9/11, when many people first imagined John McLane swooping in to wallop the bad guy and save us all, Jack Bauer has doled out his fair share of ‘justice’. And we cheered him on nearly every step of the way.

Would we cheer him on if he were a real government agent? Doubtful. But then, as Colonel Jeesep said, “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it!”

Jack was our hero. Not because he tortured people. Certainly not. But because, through him, we knew someone was out there fighting for us. Fighting for what was ‘right’. Sacrificing everything he cared about for the benefit of his country, and often doing it on his own. That is, in the rare moments when Chloe didn’t have his back.

It wasn’t just the self-sacrifice and tragic lead character that I will miss. It’s the standing date my family and I had. Fine, our attention was riveted to the television, not to some gripping conversation about how our days were, but… and this is important… the show prompted conversations between us about fear, about right and wrong, about interpretation and about relationships – both healthy and not.

My daughter grew up watching 24. She was just turning seven when it first aired. Back then, we only spoke about it with her, she didn’t watch it. But soon, she was as interested in the real-time program as her parents. Eventually, she started asking questions. Real quality questions. And soon, she offered her opinions. Quality opinions. I remember how the wide-eyed and curious little girl who didn’t understand the depth of the storyline grew into a young lady who not only understood but could debate plot points and logic in the most thoughtful way.

I’m going to miss “24”. I’m going to miss Jack and Chloe and the exciting moments and conversations they brought into my home 24 hours a year now that they have…

shut it down.

This mother’s day is difficult for my family since we lost my grandmother just weeks ago. She was 95 and until about a week before she went into the hospital, she was as with-it as anyone, of any age, could be. She was the one we’d go to and say, “Can you remind me to…. fill in the blank… because I know I’ll forget.” And she would always oblige. My grandmother was my buddy, my biggest fan, my sounding board. The hole in my heart will never completely heal and, in truth, I don’t want it to. It’s my tribute to the love she showered on me. She left a gaping void and no one, absolutely no one, will ever be able to fill it.

So she will be remembered on all days, not just on Mother’s Day.

Which is what I hope we all do for those we love. One special day to show love for our moms is wonderful. Moms deserve a full day – and more – to be pampered. But shouldn’t we all express our feelings on more than one day per year?

Treat each day as Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day… and be thankful and thoughtful to yourself and all those around you. Time waves by too quickly to comprehend, until one day when you think back, you’ll realize and say, “Has it been that long?”

Don’t let it be too long between thank you’s and I love you’s. And don’t just use the words. Thank you’s and I love you’s come in many styles – flowers, calls just to say hi, a handwritten note, a visit, a chat over coffee. So many people stress about what to get Mom for Mother’s Day when, if you think about it, giving Mom just a little more of you throughout the year would make her wake on Mother’s Day knowing she’s loved not because the calendar says she should be but because you truly feel it in your heart.

Who could ask for more than than?

A few weeks ago, reality strangled fiction. Never before had I wished so hard the two could be reversed since my pen can only revise fiction. I’d rewrite it so loss wouldn’t take place, or if it had to, then all the main characters would be there in time and express their love and admiration without reservation, pride or any other obstacle to raw honesty.

I have no regrets regarding expression. My grandmother knew my feelings for her, I never kept them a secret. My regrets lie in time not spent. One extra phone call. Would it really have been so hard? A few extra minutes just sharing a quiet moment. What I wouldn’t give for the chance at both now. Though, I know, we can never do all we wish we could with someone, no matter how much we adore them.

And now, four weeks to the day since it happened, I still feel the pain and the sadness and, in a way, hope I always do to some degree. I never want to forget what she meant to me or how it felt/feels to lose her. She was that special and her loss is a reminder of how precious all we have truly is.

And yet, life continues. My story, however, has suffered severe neglect. It’s a new month, a new day, and for my grandmother, I need to make this story succeed. She’d always ask how I was doing with my book. And I’d always say, “I’m working on it, Grandma.” Well, I haven’t worked on it in a while but now is the time to roll up the sleeves and have at it again. She wanted me to succeed. She wanted to know about the stories I was creating, the characters’ problems, the happily ever after. She knew it was fiction, knew happily-ever-after is not a real thing, but suspended disbelief because she believed in me. So. I have a story to write. Characters to torture. Happily-ever-afters to create. And when the muse wants a day off, I’ll just remember the promise and have at it again.

I’m working on it, Grandma. For you. And it’s gonna be great.