PenPenWrites
parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more
recent posts
- Sharing Family History: What one generation owes another.
- Gifting and Getting: A wish list for gifts from grandkids
- Blast from the Past: Our youthful slang is no longer passé.
- Money Matters: Data on how the Bank of Mom and Dad is doing?
- After the Minneapolis Killings: Nora Ephron on parenting grown children
© 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
- Sharing Family History: What one generation owes another.
- Gifting and Getting: A wish list for gifts from grandkids
- Blast from the Past: Our youthful slang is no longer passé.
- Money Matters: Data on how the Bank of Mom and Dad is doing?
- After the Minneapolis Killings: Nora Ephron on parenting grown children
© 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: pandemic behavior
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In August, a friend's daughter and son-in-law drove 10 hours from Boston to Maryland to visit their mom for two days. During the trip they focused on what we all focus on: stop only to gas up and use the facilities; pack the car with travel snacks and soft drinks plus lots of Clorox-like wipes…
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Back in March, when the coronavirus pandemic had most of us sheltering in place, some of us did so with our grown kids and even grandkids. Where they had been living independently, now they were with us under our roof or we under theirs–or we were within a pod of safe visitors. Who knew the…
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August days are tick-tocking down toward Fall with its school openings and flu season. Now is the supposedly "safe" time to travel–to visit children who live far away and to just plain get away. But is it safe? Some economists have suggested that we older folk should be part of a “targeted lockdown," and stay…
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Friends spent the first five months of the pandemic housing their daughter, her husband and three-year-old Lucas. The young family had been living in Manhattan when New York City became the hot zone for the coronavirus. They felt unsafe and moved in with her parents in suburban Maryland for what everyone assumed would be a…
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Their marriage had always been rocky, J tells me. "Constant arguments with moments of pure rage," all of which accelerated as their sons left for college but was in full bloom when they came home. The tension was such that J and G's kids moved out of the home as soon as they could–one taking…
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Many of my friends who have grandkids living nearby have loosened the visitation rules: The Grands and Grownkids can come to their backyards–outdoor visits only!–but no hugging. They can have a meal together–at separate tables with separate food, preferably cooked in separate kitchens. There may even be a BYO plates rule. What about little ole…
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painting: Edward Hopper (at National Gallery) Some of our grown kids have come home to ride out the Covid-19 crisis. We may be happy to have them under our roofs again and to provide safe shelter in the corona storm. But the impact on us is not negligible: Keeping the refrigerator stocked. Cooking bigger…
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Romare Bearden Tomorrow I May Be Far Away I am no longer a New Yorker but, in this time of coronavirus, I am a regular viewer of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily press briefings. When he reports those stress-inducing intubation statistics, he reminds…
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