I must have been about 13 or so when Dad was diving along I-74 between Champaign and Mahomet when I Want To Know What Love Is was playing on the radio. I remember there was a high-pitched him coming from the stereo and I associated it with Dolby – which was a new technology all …
Category Archives: Child
Loving my Step Children into my Life
When I first got together with Troy he told me about his children from a previous marriage. Of course, I nearly bolted when we had the conversation: I felt as if someone had clamped concrete shoes on my feet and thrown me into a lake! Troy, calmly, kept talking. I don’t know if he realised …
Depression and Suicide
It wasn’t long after Andrea left the US that I decided that the world would be better off without me. I would go home after school and, before Mom got home, I would get a number of tablets out of the cupboard and wonder how many I would need to take to get the job done. The …
What do you want to do when you grow up?
I can only speculate what my life would have been like without my sister. Although I was lonely and felt decidedly unloved, I doted on my sister. I didn’t feel I could trust my parents, so I wanted to be the kind of person that Louise could rely on. I grew interested in child development. …
Divorce Court – A Child’s Perspective
Tensions between my parents regularly erupted, but the incident that affected me most took place two days before I turned 16: they went to Court and I was called as a witness. The argument that started Court Proceedings on this occasion started around Christmas 1986. Dad wanted me to visit over a certain few days …
My Baby Sister
One morning when I was 11, Mom turned off the Little River Band concert on the TV and said that we needed to talk. It was springtime outside and the sun was streaming through the living room windows. Against this backdrop, Mom poured forth a story about how she had fallen in love but that …
Divorce – a child’s perspective
One of the only happy memories I have with both my parents is when we went to fly a kite. I was so young (perhaps as young as 3? Certainly no older than 4) that I couldn’t possibly tell you where we were – but I do remember the kite had big bloodshot eyes – …
Brazilian Summer, Illinois Winter
Andrea and I were in school together – aged 14-ish. In the hallway one day I saw some older kids picking on a girl saying “Go home! We don’t want you here.” I remember marching up and putting myself in between her and her tormentors. I said “How many languages do you speak?!” When I …
Sleepless Philosopher 