Tag: children
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Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy
I realize how malleable our memories can be; how a passion in our later life can be attributed to a precocious childhood; how we can bend the past like origamied paper. But, short of recognizably dated diary passages, or a still-living family member (whose memory could be equally suspect), there can be no reliable verification…
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God-damned?
Sometimes there are no easy ways to cross a swamp and many of us have chosen to live in areas so removed we cannot even see the marsh; do not understand that it may be difficult for others to reach us; do not care that they may not want to. I have seldom privileged beliefs…
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Let it not be so, lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe.
I was recently reminded of a seldom-heard song from years ago. Not only is the distance from the immense responsibility of parenting a melody of the past, but so too are the subtle layers of guilt: the silt that accumulates from the leaking floodgates of those early years. I’m not sure why I failed to…
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More than kin, and less than kind
Puberty is seldom easy nowadays, although in fairness, I suppose it never really was. From the Latin pubertas -adulthood- it is a time of eventful and often embarrassing change as children pass through a bewildering array of morphological and psychological alterations on their way to the adults they are programmed to become. For boys,…
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The Feast of Difference
I don’t read many children’s books anymore -my own children have long since had children of their own- but every so often I am reminded of how important books can be for them. Whatever you may think of political correctness and its enthusiastic exhortations for sensitivity, or its celebration of differences, there are times when…
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Is What’s Past Really Prologue?
War has so many faces and wears so many different clothes that you might be forgiven for misunderstanding its refugees. Confusing cause and effect in their behaviour, their appearance, and perhaps, most obviously, in their adaptations to the stress of upheaval and migration. There is no universal pattern that obtains, and few things to offer…
musings on women's health 