For The Love of Family

Our children and nieces in the Socco Chico of Tangier ‘s souk.

We’ve just returned from a weekend trip to Tangier, Morocco - and it was just as crazy as it sounds. Nine days away that included five travel days, four countries to make flight connections, and four days on the ground to explore and enjoy. 

Exhausting for someone in our well-seasoned era of life. And wonderful at the same time. 

As exotic as Tangier sounds - and is - it is also the hometown of my late mother-in-law’s family going back more than 500 years and the refugee haven for my father-in-law who left Europe ahead of the Anschluss. And that means it was a frequent destination for family visits over the past forty plus years. 

Somehow we’ve never lived in the same community as close relatives, so my kids grew up with friends serving the role as aunts and uncles and cousins. Seeing actual relatives required airplanes and passports. 

Friends would always say, “Ooh, you’re going to Tangier. How amazing!” And I would smile and shrug since what we were really doing was going to visit the in-laws. Not that there was anything wrong with that - it merely transformed a vacation into a trip with obligations. 

There were dinners at Uncle Harry’s with Uncles Ruben and Abram at the table to argue with my mother-in-law and her sister Simi over the color of their grandmother’s original table clothes. There were afternoons with the family at the Tangier “Yacht” Club, a thatch-roofed cafe with changing stalls overlooking the wide sandy beaches of the Mediterranean Bay. And relearning Spanish each summer to keep up with the conversations of the multiple cousins that would appear at our hotel to catch up as the kids swam and played. 

The generation of uncles and aunts - including my in-laws - are all gone now. Only the first cousins remain and they (we) too are aging. Our children are grown and our lives have become busy so we don’t frequent Tangier as we once did. However one of my brothers-in-law now lives there - so we go every few years to check in. 

We were tentatively planning one of those check in trips for later this fall, when our adult nieces piped in and told us that they really wanted to visit Tangier. The catch was that they would need to visit in July while kids were in camp. And we have a several decade rule that we don’t travel in summer - the weather is perfect in Minnesota then and we work to avoid crowds and heat whenever possible. 

But for the nieces? We were in and we got to work on a plan with their parents, the other brother and sister-in-law who live in the States. 

There are no direct flights to Madrid, which is the easiest jump off point to Tangier. So we flew from Mpls/St.Paul to the Paris airport and I dredged up all of the French I could remember from Miss Dock’s junior high class to maneuver from Terminal E to Terminal F which, based on the alphabet, should have been close by. Au contraire! But I perfected my one full sentence/thought saying, “Je ne parle pas Francais. Parlez-vous Anglais?” over and over again. 

And then we arrived in Madrid and la lingua changed to Spanish. “Hola!”

We spent two nights in Madrid - allegedly to deal with jet lag but really to see some cousins now living in the city and to visit a few places we’ve enjoyed over the years. And although the wildfire smoke of July wasn’t readily visible, the particulates made breathing a challenge  - and the heat? Increible!

Off to Tanger - where we arrived just as the Moroccans were celebrating Throne Day - in honor of the current king’s ascension to the Throne. That means lots of people and music and dancing in the streets. Festive and crowded.

Tangier itself has grown exponentially since my first visit in 1982 when there were fewer than 300,000 residents of the city. Today the city itself has more than 1.35 million residents, spreading along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts from its position at the tip of North Africa. The old city retains much of its charm and the souk is still home to friends Majid and Mohammed with their antique and Volubilis art shops. The Cafe Central in the Socco Chico is still a rest stop to watch the world walk by - and it’s strangely comforting to see familiar smiling faces that have graced doorways for more than forty years. 

For the nieces, we made certain they visited their great grandmother’s villa - now serving as the American Language Institute - so they could see where their father and his relatives gathered for family holidays in the halls. They went to the souk and met our friends on the way to the kasbah and they experienced the Villa Mabrouka for a meal at the former home of Yves Saint Laurent overlooking the straits of Gibralter. They all went to see the Caves of Hercules at the point where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean and we shared a Moroccan meal with cous cous and b’stilla (or pastilla, as some spell it). 

And along the way, we had a great time. We achieved the goal of checking on our Tangier-residing brother-in-law. He’s doing well. We saw old friends. We met some new friends. And we arrived home tired and grateful. 

Crossings

Sunset off the bow of the Queen Mary 2, May, 2026

I’ve never been attracted to travel alongside throngs of people that require loading on and off of buses to be deposited en masse for a few moments of “oohing” and “ahhing” in front of sites that are minimally explained by overly perky guides. 

Just not my idea of the point of travel. 

To me, it’s about discovery and surprise and moments of “who knew”! It’s rambling down cobblestone or tiled paths to find a small cafe with surprisingly refreshing beverages served by easy going proprietors. 

Add to that my general overwhelm at the concept of cruises on the ocean-going behemoths plying the seas today. The thought of pulling into port and disembarking with thousands of humans prowling about for the perfect souvenir - well, my palms are sweating just writing that sentence. 

So it is with great surprise and bemusement that I confess how much I truly adored crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 this year. I had no idea that travel itself could be so calming and comfortable and truly enjoyable. 

As much as I enjoy being in other places - other countries - the process of getting there is always filled with certain stresses. The risk of weather delays that cause missed flight connections. Crowded and crabby airplanes. Simply schlepping suitcases and bags from planes to taxis to hotels. It’s the process of arriving - and departing - that’s the hassle. 

But not so when one travels from London to New York on the Queen Mary. This is a ship built for crossing the Atlantic, meaning stabilizers and the heft to remain steady. And a crossing is not a cruise. It’s a voyage with a singular purpose - to transport its passengers from one continent to another with no stops - or visible land, for that matter - in between. 

We had been talking about doing a crossing for nearly 45 years - as that is how my husband’s family came and went from the U.S. in the late 1940s and 1950s before jet travel was readily available. And we wanted to do a crossing together.

It is now my new favorite way to travel. We traveled on the Olivier Awards crossing - or the British version of the Tonys. That meant we had talented actors, singers, and choreographers on board for nightly entertainment and classes and lectures. There also were a talented classical pianist, a former ambassador, and a forensic pathologist as well to entertain and enthrall us with lectures and performances.

Dining options were plentiful and the daily afternoon tea was both a sight to behold and a replacement for dinner, if one so chose. There were quiet areas with puzzles and games; a library filled with books and magazines and daily word games; a decked out gym facility; a spa and salon; a casino and shops; and pools and decks for strolling and games. It was a complete resort experience on the ocean. 

A daily calendar of events guided some of our activities, but once again, it was those experiences we stumbled upon that are the most memorable. 

The first morning, we set off on a quest to find the best coffee on board led, naturally, by a sense of smell. When we located a lounge with the right aroma of espresso beans that had a surprise array of breakfast food available, we settled in for a comfy nosh. And that’s when we first heard the words, “Welcome to morning trivia!” 

We aren’t trivia people. Or we weren’t trivia people before deciding with a shrug that we could just play along on our own while the decidedly competitive lot around us teamed up with glinty eyes. 

At least we began on our own before a nearby couple asked if they could join our clearly non-competitive effort. And that’s how we met John and Delyth. 

They had been speaking an indecipherable language before saying they wanted to play. As we laughed our way through a shoddy showing that demonstrated our lack of trivial knowledge, we learned the language was Welsh, and now we have added Wales to our list of places we must visit.

They became our plus two for evening performances in the well-appointed theater, and our favorite people with whom to share a bottle of bubbly on board. 

Yes, the people on board become part of the charm of a crossing. There was the author and her wife celebrating the publication of her new novel; a fascinating former PR exec traveling on his own as his wife hated sea travel; darling octogenarian sisters who crossed every year with the Oliviers and had booked out the next two years. The sisters told us they once had crossed with a literary crowd but found them all toffee-nosed, a new favorite British slight to toss around when warranted. 

It turns out that a crossing of seven days leaves one with no jet lag as those five hours are reclaimed slowly along the way. So I’ve decided that this is the way to travel in the future and we’re already hatching reasons to return to London - new shows, old friends, and restaurants we simply must try. 

Fireworks for the Fourth

Fireworks over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis…taken by Steven Mosborg this year.

My earliest memory of a Fourth of July celebration was at Aunt Mary and Uncle Walter’s in Walnut Hills. Aunt Mary was actually my mother’s niece. But she was the same age as my mom since her sister was 21 when my mother was born. My mother was a classic” Oops Baby”, which explains so much about her persona. So we called our cousin Aunt Mary. 

Over the years, mom figured out that Aunt Mary was a deeply kind soul who never said no when Mom pronounced, “I’m dropping the kids over for a day at the neighborhood pool.”

So we’d spend mornings at Walnut Hills pool, then trek up the hill to Aunt Mary’s where she’d feed us, and we’d loll about until we’d gathered the energy to go back down to the pool where Mom would pick us up at the end of the day. 

I have no idea what my mother did on those long summer days with no kids at home, but I know Aunt Mary worked hard to feed us, dry towels for us, and provide a haven of comfort and calm when needed. 

And that’s how Fourth of Julys were at their place. Mom would announce - “We’re going to Aunt Mary’s to see fireworks.” So much easier to sit on her back lawn and watch fireworks shot off - and an easy drive home. And Aunt Mary, or actually Uncle Walter, would grill hot dogs and there would be potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, all the things. Oh - and pop. Something we didn’t have at home, but no one noticed when we nabbed one at Aunt Mary’s.

Fireworks were spectacular when we lived in Washington in the early 1980s. That was when going down to Capitol Hill to sit on the lawn overlooking the Washington Monument was no big deal. The symphony would play, and we’d await the 1812 overture which was the signal that fireworks were about to begin. The whole thing felt like a larger version of the fireworks from my childhood - just with a remarkable backdrop, excellent musical accompaniment, and several thousand neighbors sharing the lawn. 

And now that I’ve actually existed for close to a third of this nation’s existence, I enjoy  fireworks at a distance. We watched the spectacular explosions over New York City and Nashville, and the highly produced musical performances that backed them up. 

By then, we were in a postprandial stupor as we hosted a Vintage 4th Cook Out with former neighbors, dear friends, and family earlier in the evening. We thought it important to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the affirmation by the original Congress of the values and principles embedded in our Constitution - those articulate framers of our nation’s potential. 

They imagined a future of independence, liberty, and the freedom to pursue happiness…a work in progress for this nation of ours. Hope you have had an opportunity to celebrate. 

Bucket Lists

I’ve never really believed in making a bucket list. Why put off for tomorrow something you can plan for today?

I suppose it began when I was making the case for spending a college semester in Venice. My university thought that exposing students to other cultures in other lands was an excellent way to further its educational programs. So when I figured out that Wake Forest offered a semester in Venice for the same tuition and the same room rate to live on the Grand Canal instead of a dorm in Winston-Salem, I was all in. The trick was to get my parents to agree. 

This was in the 1970s when Europe was still encouraging college students to backpack about and the book Europe On $5 a Day had just come out with its new edition, promoting the same idea on $10 a Day. And Eurail offered discounted train passes for college students as did airlines. Ah, the good old days. 

I compiled my arguments for spending part of my junior year living in a palazzo on the Grand Canal next door to what is today the Guggenheim Museum, and then was Peggy Guggenheim’s home. As I laid out the well-researched arguments for why a semester in Italy made sense financially and academically, I ran into a question from my mother that stopped me in my tracks.

”If you go to Italy and Europe while you’re in college, Mary, what will you look forward to when you’re older,”” she said. 

I thought I had all her objections laid out. But this, I never anticipated. I paused for a long moment and said, “Many more trips to Europe, I suppose.” 

At that, my mom paused. She, who had pulled a wagon about Deshler, Ohio selling milk and eggs from the farm to augment the Depression era income for her family, and still managed to go to college to get a music degree, paused for a moment. 

“Hmm. That never occurred to me.” 

If she’d lived more than a year past my college graduation, she would have been amazed at our travels to Europe and beyond. With a husband born in the international city-state of Tangier, and a mother-in-law who spent the last 30 plus years of her life in Madrid, with family in Caracas - when it was safer, and in Israel which has rarely been at peace, I’ve  had a remarkable fulfillment of that prediction. 

Here I sit in a sweet little hotel bar within spitting distance of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London remembering all of the trips I have made with my foreign-born husband and our children, realizing that my semester in Venice was just a launching pad for the global curiosity I’ve maintained. 

OK - so maybe there is one item on our joint bucket list that we’ve talked about for more than 45 years…and we’re going to tick that off soon: a crossing of the Atlantic on a ship. 

Jacques has fond memories of the crossings he made as a child as his family was working to log the residency required in the U.S. towards citizenship in the late 1940s and 1950s. He remembers ping pong tournaments, and horse racing games that entertained the children as their parents dressed for dinner in the evenings. And he’s always wanted to do a crossing with me. 

Only once did I call it a cruise. “No. This is different. It’s crossing the ocean with a purpose - to get from one side to the other. Not a cruise to empty out a large ship of tourists in ports of call. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - but a crossing is different.”

We shall see. I’ll let you know how it goes as we cross off this singular bucket item from our otherwise non-existent list. 

Reflections on Aging

My talented neighbor, Steven Mosborg, captures reflections better than most…

Ever have one of those flashes of insight that make you wonder how you lived until today without figuring it out before? 

I’ve been having an alarming number of those lately, and I’m chalking it up to my relatively newly achieved well-seasoned age. As said by one of our founding fathers Ben Franklin ““Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” 

At this point, I’m just grateful that I’ve achieved enough age to begin gleaning a smattering of wisdom, or at least I’ve become old enough to figure a few things out.

This week, I figured out that I share the same age decade with the man to whom I have been married for more than 44 years for exactly one and a half years every decade. And what does that awkward sentence mean? It means that when I finally reached the age of 30, he was still in his 30s for another year and a half. Same with 40, and then 50, and well, you get the idea. 

So this year, it was somehow shocking to realize that we would only share our 70s for another year before one of us moves into the next decade of age.  I mean, it is also somewhat shocking to realize we’re both IN our 70s, but that’s feeling more and more like a gift at this point. 

How did time move so fast? And how do we have fully adult children engaged in their fully adult lives who are nearly absolutely autonomous on their own? 

And that brings up another batch of insights that have been occurring with surprising frequency - those that make me realize that my mom, surprisingly, was right. 

Mom was a complicated woman who left too soon. She was gone before I turned 23, so my memory of “Momisms” goes way back. 

She always said that she couldn’t believe I was in high school because she sometimes felt she was still in her teens. That statement always stopped me for a second, as I looked at her freshly retinted red hair and thought, “Really, Mom?” 

When they drove to North Carolina to drop me off for my first year of college, she was enthralled with the Wake Forest campus. In her earnest and eager way, she was making friends with other parents with the opening line of, “Can you believe our children are old enough for college?” 

It was somewhat horrifying to my 18 year old self, but she got a laugh from other parents, so I didn’t interfere with her efforts. 

And now, here I am surprised that my grown daughter is old enough to go to a professional conference out of state without me, and that my son and his family are old enough to fly across the country to gather with their delightful in-laws. Now it’s me, saying to Jacques, “Can you believe our children are old enough to travel without us?” 

The Holiday of Memory

…the first table setting the day before the Seder..more plates were added

It’s really only eight days, but preparing for a Friday night with challah again feels like a big deal now that Passover has concluded. 

Now that the extensive preparation and planning are over, I have time to reflect on this annual experiential holiday that requires us to relive the story of the Exodus from Egypt. It’s the story of the Hebrew people, originally welcomed by Egypt’s rulers as sages, who then were seen as “other” by a new king who had not known Joseph or his brothers. Not that biblical timelines are perfect, but it apparently took about 100 years - a couple generations - for the helpful to become an enslaved people.

And every year - now some 3,000 years later - we gather around tables with family, friends, and always the children to retell, and relive, the story of the exodus. 

All families have different ways to bring the story alive so that we can experience the pain of slavery - with vibrantly bitter horseradish in this house - the tears of our ancestors, with radishes dipped in salt water - with various mideastern haroset, or sticky dried fruit, nut, red wine pastes that remind us of the mortar used to build the Pharaoh's temples. 

The ten plaques take on lively dimensions when ping pong balls fly across the table as the plague of hail is called, or bouncy plastic frogs, or dark glasses, or wild animals. And depending on the attention span of the children, there are sticker books to occupy little fingers as we tell the story one more time.

Passover is all about memory - ensuring the story of becoming an “other”, of suffering slavery and our ancestors' quest for freedom and autonomy through the hand of God - remains real for Jews today and for our children and grandchildren. 
It’s also a holiday where we remember all those who have shared our table over the years. 

Even when patience is waning, I need to sing Dayenu to bring back the memory of my mother-in-law's laughter as she sang that tune with great gusto. We remember Uncles Harry and Abram who liked to argue the timing of sundown in this Northern state, from their equatorial perspective of time. One of them loved watching us burn the hametz in the tin pail, while the other was bemused at our feather and wooden spoon search with the kids before the start of the holiday. 

And this year, others emerged at our table. The mother of a dear friend who departed a few months ago, meaning it was the first time he was observing without her in his 70+ years. My college roommate, who would have loved sharing the measured chaos of a Seder with her grandchildren if she’d had the gift of time to do so. Our former neighbor, who was always so curious about Jewish holidays. 

Once more, we put away the matzo platter, sweep up the crumbs and reintroduce pasta and bread and cakes to our menu, and hope the memories we created this year will last.

Is it ADHD...or...

….even Hank and Herbie can’t decide what to do next…

It’s been coming on in the past eighteen months or so, this feeling that someone missed my ADHD diagnosis. My doctor friends tell me that I would have needed an ADHD diagnosis by the time I was 12 for this to be my true issue. But in the 1960s, we really didn’t know that much about the causes of squiggly kids who couldn’t pay attention. 

My symptoms now have all the signs - an inability to focus on one thing longer than a few minutes; distractions that occur with an increasingly random frequency; a pile of books I really, really want to read that’s gathering dust; phone conversations that trail off midway through a sentence; walking into rooms with a purpose that flies away the minute I cross a threshold. 

All of these make planning for tomorrow or even later today a real chore. 

So if it’s not ADHD, what could it be?

It could be age. I’ve heard that people at “our age” tend to wander a bit. We do have decades of experience to mentally leaf through whenever we confront the latest life experience. That can be distracting.

It could be the wide array of inputs that ping and ding and flash on any screen I’m wearing, holding, or staring at in the moment. As a kid, my inputs were limited to one newspaper, one TV, a transistor radio, and that lady down the street that knew everything about everyone. 

It could be the experienced chaos of life in Minneapolis over the past year with assassinations of a legislative leader and her husband, shootings at a Catholic school sanctuary, and roaming ICE thugs pulling brown, black, and Asian neighbors from our streets. And yes, Tom, it truly was that random. The fact checking and documentation now showing up in courts is overwhelming.

It could be the widening recognition that there is little reason to have any confidence in the competence of those “in charge” of federal or national institutions that have stood fast for 250 years in this experimental democracy of ours.

It could involve what’s happening on the other side of this fragile globe as this country appears to be marching towards full out war in the Middle East. And it’s truly a struggle to track all of the reasons why we are there now. 

Or maybe, maybe it’s just the weather. We had a blizzard on Sunday, then it was 77 degrees the next Saturday, then it bounced back to 29 degrees by Monday. Spring does bring out the most chaotic changes, doesn’t it? 

Building and Nurturing Resilience

This is a picture of my friend Carmela standing on the frozen Lake of the Isles during last weekend’s luminary loppet event, the lights of downtown Minneapolis in the distance. 

As in years past, thousands of Minnesotans flocked to this event both to help light the candles, bonfires, and displays that make this a favorite event of winter on the ice - and to participate in its glorious effect. 

This is what Minnesotans do in the midst of snowy, icy winter in one of the coldest states in the nation. We bundle up. We go outside. And we revel in the beauty of lights in the midst of dark, seeking warmth on frozen lakes, and the community of neighbors who share our commitment to protecting what we’ve built. 

This is how we nurture our resilience that has been sorely tested with the siege of our cities and state. 

As individual stories come out of the grotesque grabbing of kids on the way to school and of parents out to buy groceries, our resilience can crack and threaten to break. But it hasn’t yet. 

Instead, nearly all of us find ways to help out and every act of support builds resilience. Many truly nurture our collective resilience. 

Such as witnessing nearly 2,000 men and women meet at a downtown church to march together as part of a Singing Resistance group that totals more than 5,000 souls so far. They march through downtown streets singing hymns and songs of support for our neighbors too afraid to leave their homes. That is nurturing to all involved.

Thousands are buying groceries and supplies as part of a vast array of networks providing mutual aid to those who need help. Churches, community centers, restaurants that are understaffed but working long hours, and neighborhood blocks are all actively involved. 

And that is nurturing to the battered soul of our city and state. 

Some are raising funds for those they know who can not leave their homes. Money for rent and for utilities to keep homes warm while they shelter inside. Money for iPads for kids who are “going” to school virtually now. That is building resilience. 

At this point, it’s clear to those of us who live here that our built and inherited resolve will sustain us. And we will persist in calling attention to violations of civil and criminal law as they occur. Because that is nurturing for our Constitutional democracy. 

Despite news of a “draw down”, 2,300 masked and armed men continue to roam our streets and cruise around schools, day care centers, and hospital parking lots. Nursing homes are struggling to remain open as so many caregivers are immigrants who are too afraid to go to work. 

Even if all the excessive ICE force leave soon, the traumatic impact of this siege on our city and state will be remembered for generations. And we will remain resilient. We will survive.