Last year, I interviewed my granddaughter, Sidra, just before her brother Will was born. Tomorrow (4-17-14) will be Will’s first birthday. I asked Sidra to chat with me again about her first year as a big sister. (See also Interview at 6 months.) Sidra (9 years old): Year one: I was so excited because I […]
I was in the Boy Scouts once. One point in their credo is: ‘be prepared’. I’ll go along with that, even though I only made it to the rank of Tenderfoot. The kids are here from Chicago and LA. The house looks like a hurricane hit it, but we are having fun. We visited Stanford […]
One of the whole points of being in Chicago at this time of year is to experience Halloween with the grandkids. My other daughter will also be here with her boyfriend, so it will be a great reunion. William has a skeleton T-shirt, and another outfit that resembles Frankenstein, in a way. But frankly (pardon […]
I had so much fun since we arrived. Sidra is such a doll. She could hardly wait to do a stop-motion video with me. I was the cameraman and she was the director. Rebecca, her American Girl doll was the star. All it took was 150 snapshots, rudimentary editing and we had the whole of Rebecca’s […]
Shortly after 8 PM on April 17, 2013, my granddaughter became a big sister. She had been waiting for this occasion her entire life (except for the first 6 months of it). Usually, Siddy has so much energy, she has to jump up and down in order to dissipate it. But even that was not […]
I enjoyed interviewing my granddaughter yesterday. Within a couple of days, she will become an older sister. As she intimated to me yesterday, she has wanted a baby brother or sister her entire life. She is afraid that she will feel jealous and that she wont know the right things to do to take care […]
I usually write about my brother Michael and my relationship with him. But my 8 1/2 year old granddaughter’s mother will have a baby any day now. On the eve of siblinghood, I asked Sidra her thoughts about becoming a big sister. Jack: How long have you wanted a baby brother or sister? Sidra: 8 […]
My brother is nonverbal, autistic and very low functioning. I don’t know if I will ever be able to communicate with him on any level but the most basic, i.e., Food=Good, No Food=Not Good. Thought Experiment If it is true that every person has a mental state of some kind, and that mental states are reflected in […]
Sharing How do you know if the ‘red’ I see is the same ‘red’ you see? Does it matter? It wouldn’t matter for people who with similar ‘sensibilities’.[1] This topic would rarely come up, especially between two people with normal color vision. I don’t believe it would even come up in a conversation between a […]
This is how I remember most of the moments between Dad and Mike. Dad, although tireless, seldom connected with Mike. Was it Mike being rebellious or uncomprehending? I know that I rebelled at times. Did Dad expect too much and demand that things be only his way? Was he the uncomprehending one? When I used […]
