Tag: family
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Everyday life, half a world away
I’ve written at length this week about the big things that affected me in Germany. I’ve saved the best for last: the everyday family life I enjoyed. Ulrich (OOL-rick) and Irene (ee-RAY-nuh) were my host parents, and Peter (PAY-ter) and Ulrike (ool-REE-kuh) my teenaged host brother and sister. They lived what I see now was…
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Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer says no more working from home – and I say, “Right on!”
They say that the first secret of success is simply showing up. For those of us who work in software development, I say that means going to the office every workday. Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo!, seems to agree. She recently told the Internet company’s employees that they would no longer be allowed…
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Anchors
Do you have any possessions that connect you to times in your past? My end tables and coffee table came from a used furniture store just after I graduated from college and got my first apartment. A matched set in the fussy Colonial Revival style, they were inexpensive when they were manufactured, which was probably…
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The sounds of Christmas
This Christmas memory was originally posted in 2009. The Christmas season begins for my family when we put up our tree shortly after Thanksgiving. But it’s really not trimming the tree itself that does it – it’s that as we string the lights and hang the bulbs, we listen to the traditional Grey family holiday…
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Grandpa and me
This is probably my favorite photograph of all time. Meet my grandfather, who is holding me shortly after my birth in 1967. Grandpa was an engineer, and he and Grandma were living temporarily in Seattle while he worked on a project. They flew back to South Bend just in time for my birth. Shortly after…
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A place where it means something to be a Grey
Handley is a tiny West Virginia town 20 miles south of Charleston on the Kanawha River. It served the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad back in the day. Cars full of coal still constantly pass through town. This is where my family is from. My great grandmother Grey owned a tavern next to the rail yard office. My…
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Home alone
It’s Down the Road’s fifth blogiversary! All month I’m reposting favorite stories from the blog’s early days. My ex-wife was happiest when she was busy, and so she always had an astonishing to-do list going. Saturday mornings she’d bounce out of bet at six and work hard and fast, a million things to do, all day.…
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Making traditions up as you go
It’s my ex-wife’s turn to enjoy Thanksgiving with our sons, so I’ll be home alone tonight. Don’t weep for me – we had the family, the fine china, the turkey, and the post-dinner coma last Saturday. When I was small, we always had Thanksgiving with Mom’s family and sometimes again later with Dad’s. Mom’s family…
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Reflections in the snow
The snowy season began a little early here in Indianapolis, with the first snowfalls in late December. We had a white Christmas for the first time in years. It snowed three times before I was able to shovel my driveway. The more my little car packed down the snow, the more it slipped and slid on…
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Mom Grey on my mind
Everyone in the family called her Mom. She was my father’s father’s mother, my great grandmother, and her time overlapped mine by a handful of years. Filet-O-Fish sandwiches will always make me think of her. She was born in the West Virginia hills at a time when indoor plumbing wasn’t yet widely available. She is…