PenPenWrites
parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more
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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.
recent posts
© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.
Category: covid 19
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Several years ago when my daughter lived clear across the country, she called late one evening. She was sick and so was her husband and the baby–my year-old granddaughter. "I wish you lived next door," she said in a dispirited, sick-person voice. I was on a plane the next morning, It's what we do if…
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Friends of ours just returned from four weeks in Italy. Days of sunshine. Mornings with una tazza di caffè. So delightful. They stayed at a four-story house their son and his family have rented: Their daughter-in-law was appointed to a prestigious job at an international agency headquartered in Rome and so the family relocated. What…
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When our kids were young and living under our roof, if they were impolite or said something inappropriate to their grandmother, we stepped up to point out (kindly, of course!) a more polite way to do or say something. But now that they are adults, is it still our job? Are we still in the…
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We are on the cusp of setting a totally new tradition for our family's Thanksgiving. It's time. We are no longer young parents. Our kids are middle-aged adults; they have children who are young adults. Extended family members are growing frail and need special attention. I, who usually embrace change, don't like the changes that…
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During the pandemic lockdown many of us experienced a strange shift in the balance between us and our grown kids: Instead of our previous parental controls, they were "ordering" us around–telling us we had to stay home, stop going out to buy groceries and order take-out food delivered. It came, of course, from an overabundance…
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The pandemic was difficult for everyone. As parents of grown children, some of us couldn't see our kids or grandkids–no hugs, no in-person visits. Infants and toddlers had no "village" to support them or playdates to socialize them. School-age kids–well, the school year was a disaster for many of them. Our grown kids, especially the…
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We have come through (are still in) harrowing times–not just the pandemic but partisan divides and a Fascist-like call-out of one group or another. It isn't just Twitter storms or Facebook harangues. As any of us who follow the news know, violence against people from various ethnic or religious groups is on the rise here.…
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