PenPenWrites
parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more
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.
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: weddings
-
I bumped into an old work friend, someone I shared office space with some 30 years ago when we were both reporters at a start-up magazine. He moved on to other media jobs, we lost touch except for an occasional Facebook sighting. That's how I knew his daughter had gotten engaged. When we turned the…
-
Restructured families–divorced parents and step-parents–aren't easy for our grown kids to navigate, especially when their weddings roll around. Traditions and protocols that involve multiple parents and their participation in the ceremony can be a minefield of hurt feelings. As young couples revise their approach to traditional wedding ceremonies, one ritual that has been inflicting pain…
-
Consider this the antidote. In my last post, I blogged about a mother of the bride who was distraught that her daughter was breaking all the traditional rules of a wedding (no bridal gown, no attendants, no celebratory dinner reception plus the father banned from walking his daughter down the aisle–the latter not an easy…
-
Some of us dream (this writer excluded) of planning our child's wedding, especially if our child is the bride. Oh the bridal gown we'll buy, the party we'll plan, the food we'll serve, the band we'll hire, the flowers we'll choose. And if we have clear and happy memories of our own extravagantly traditional wedding,…
-
Something there is about a son or daughter's wedding that can multiply problems rather than joys. A lot of the issues for us as parents–besides whether we're going to foot the bill–is what can be called, for lack of a better word, our "allotment." That is, the number of people we can invite. It's often…
-
Here's the premise: After we've helped support our adult children through college and early work years, they (and their spouse) owe us grandkids. If they don't deliver, they should pay us back. Moreover, we can sue them if they don't fulfill their part of the next-generation equation. Hah! A laughable notion, right? But in India,…
-
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…
-
As Mother's Day nears, what more touching message could we hear than this one from author Abigail Tucker via an e-newsletter from NYTimes staff editor, Sarah Wildman. Only human females and a handful of long-lived whales have a lengthy life phase when reproduction ends and the time arrives to pitch in with the grandkids,”…
PenPenWrites 