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: holidays and adult children
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Many of us will not be able to hug our children or grandchildren this holiday week. We may see them on a screen or hear them on a phone but the family traditions we usually observed–hosting a large family feast; traveling to gather together with grown children and grandchildren–are not safely possible this year. While…
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Our grown children are in their households. We're in ours. We may be in the same city or not. We did whatever we did over Thanksgiving but now the Christmas-New Year holidays are ahead of us. So are worsening pandemic numbers. We all yearn for a "normal" holiday time together. And yet, there is danger…
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Zoom is the answer. That's what we–me, my friends, our families–tell each other when we talk about how we'll be together when we won't be together this Thanksgiving. But what will we do with Zoom–sit in front of a camera and tell each other Hello and Happy Thanksgiving? Eat our separate dinners together in front…
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He's a health and science reporter for the New York Times and was recently awarded the 2020 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism by the Columbia Journalism school. All that background noise is by way of saying that in an interview with a fellow New York Time's reporter, Donald McNeil put the current sorrows…
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Thanksgiving is only one of the family get-togethers upended by the coronavirus. Summer vacations, family reunions, birthday celebrations, Father's Day, Mother's Day, even funerals–lots of us have been unable to celebrate or observe any of these in person with our children (and their families) since the coronavirus barged into our lives. How are we coping…
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Two more children have tested positive for Covid-19 at a granddaughter's high school. Where there were none, three have come up positive at my grandson's college. Small numbers. Controls are in place. Not to worry. But my daughter-in-law sends me these reports–"Sheesh" she texts–to confirm how correct we were to cancel the three-family Thanksgiving get-together…
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My neighbor Lisa has made her Thanksgiving plans. Her mother and her two grown children live in a town that's a six hour drive north from her home. For the holidays she has bought–and had delivered to her mother's house–one party tent with roll up sides that can comfortably hold 20 somewhat socially distanced guests…
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When economists philosophize, they'll tell you that the young start out liberal and as they gather worldly goods and status they mature into conservatives. In a maxim variously attributed to Winston Churchill, Victor Hugo and a slew of others, the thought bubble goes like this: "Any man who is under 30, and is not a…
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When we were young and in our parental prime, the big holiday dimmers were at our house. Our best friends and their children joined us; we shared the cooking. Even as the years passed and the children became adults and added spouses or significant others to the holiday, we kept to our formula. Among the…
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