by: Trish Cantillon “You and your daughter look like sisters!” I said sincerely as I scrolled through my friend Katelyn’s photos. “You look great!” Katelyn, in her early forties, then copped to the fact that she had used the photo app ULike to achieve the youthful look, then insisted I download it. I did. She took a couple selfies of us with baby doll rosy cheeks and soft lighting. She then educated me on all the options for altering the…
by: Trish Cantillon “Is that a scrunchie?” I asked the Madewell salesgirl yesterday, pointing at a container filled with the 90s era hair bob with suspicion. The girl nodded enthusiastically, “Yes, aren’t they cute? They’re really popular!” Was that true? Were they cute and popular again? It immediately brought to mind my own jar filled with scrunchies, a pink neon fanny pack and my boom box. I wondered, why are some things gone forever while others resurface? On a winter’s…
by: Trish Cantillon On the first Thursday of December my mom and I would do our “Christmas walk” through Beverly Hills. Back then, Thursday was the only night stores were open past six o’clock. We’d drive the few blocks from our house and park across the street from Good Shepherd Church, the same place we parked every Sunday for Mass. The stained glass windows that lined the side of the church looked spooky in the dark, but the two Mission-style…
by: Trish Cantillon By the fall of 1980, my dad had died of cirrhosis of the liver. In the last year of his life I felt angry, sad and guilty. I did whatever I could to avoid seeing him and barely tolerated him when I did. He was bottoming out in his disease and at only fifteen, I was ill-equipped to manage those complicated feelings. His death brought relief and I was immediately grateful to be out from under the…
by Trish Cantillon “The days are long, and the years are short,” writes Gretchen Rubin in her book, The Happiness Project. It has never felt truer than now, four weeks away from an empty nest. My daughter is already a junior in college, but my son—number two of two—leaves for his freshman year across the country soon. The only parent-life that I have known where my fingerprints have been all over every decision is ending. It’s not necessarily that there…