by Lisa Marlin | Oct 11, 2016 | Blog, Parenting
My mother told me that the pain is necessary so I wasn’t praying right to want it gone. She wasn’t rude about it; she didn’t interrupt my prayer, but gently nudged me when I was done. The pain will keep her safe, Mom said while I sat on the edge of the desk next to...
by Lisa Marlin | Jul 31, 2016 | Blog, Middle Age, Parenting, Writing
This lopsided life of mine all began while I was living my childhood dream and I looked in the mirror one night and saw the face of a woman I didn’t recognize. Her lips couldn’t form a smile and her right eye wouldn’t close. Later in the emergency room, I first...
by Lisa Marlin | Jun 21, 2016 | Blog, Middle Age, Parenting
I downloaded a new screensaver. It’s colorful and cute and occasionally, it cries. My picture perfect grandson entered the world before the sun was up on June 5. His daddy, my son Riles, video called me hours later and I watched my first grandbaby from 700 miles away...
by Lisa Marlin | Jun 12, 2016 | Blog, Middle Age, Parenting
What is it about parents that they think because they enjoyed something in their youth (that’s me in NYC in the top left photo), that their children (that’s my daughter, right, in the same place years later) will be just as thrilled about doing the same...
by Lisa Marlin | Jun 4, 2016 | Blog, Parenting, Published
(A version of this essay was published in The Huffington Post on June 6, 2016) What I know of boxing, you can put in a box. A teeny tiny box. But I knew enough as a young mother that when Muhammad Ali came to town, it was time to grab the baby and go meet the greatest...
by Lisa Marlin | May 27, 2016 | Blog, Middle Age, Parenting
My first grandchild is due any day now and I’ve got two words of advice for his parents: Hold on. 1) Hold on to your lives before baby — to the memories of that time you met each other and started dating and broke up and then dated again until it just...