The Meems

On Thursday, January 9, 2020, Helen Katherine Williams Kinzbach, aka The Meems, turned 94 years old.  NINE-TEE-FOUR.  

It was a low-key affair.  There were balloons, a cake, some tulips, chicken strips from Chicken Express, and a very sleepy birthday girl.

In a...

We sat in a park watching our toddlers sliding down the small red plastic slide and scooting through the little yellow tunnel.  As mothers do, we quietly chatted about the foods that our sons would not eat, how long they napped and what was currently on sale at Target....

But first...many of you have tentatively asked how Meems is doing.  I say "tentatively" because it's been a while since my last update, and, sometimes the enquirer will ask with a look that says, "Did she die and I missed the post?"  Fear not.  You have missed nothing....

That was then.  This is most of the time.

People often ask me how Meems is doing.  I need to start pulling out my phone and showing this picture.  It sums up how she is "doing."  It's hard to put words to it.  "Eating and sleeping."  "In bed twenty-three out of every tw...

Yesterday, I entered Mom’s cozy little room, set down the insulated fabric picnic hamper that now serves as my embroidery basket, and then, knelt to to be on eye level with my sleepyheaded mother. 

“Hey, Mom, I’m Carolyn, you’re daughter.”

She knows me about 1 out o...

I did something rather odd this morning.  I trudged upstairs to the attic, retrieved a wrinkled, ancient chambray shirt from the color-coded storage tub carefully labeled "cel - High School," tromped back downstairs with the 47-year-old relic in tow, set up the ironing...

I was fifteen years old the first time that I thought that my mother was at death's door.  It was the summer of 1971.  Mom had just come home from the hospital after major surgery - a hysterectomy.  Aunt Wanda and Uncle Bill spent the afternoon with us making sure that...

My sister, Kathy, taught me to "find the funny" in life.  Back in the day, we laughed with each other and at each other until we were breathless with tears streaming down our faces. It was the kind of laughter that tends to continue to bubble up throughout the day trig...

Broken home. I heard those words during homeroom my senior year of high school - 1975 - in reference to me.  My face burned hot with embarrassment. 

Sharanda Reed was tall and thin. She wore a patterned peasant top with bell-bottomed, low-slung jeans that were...