My husband Rick, who coaches a youth soccer team, was waiting with our 14-year-old son, Danny, for the rest of their team to arrive when they saw a teenage girl kicking a soccer ball. Rick asked the girl if she wanted to practice with his team and she politely declined. That well-intentioned invitation earned my husband the moniker "creeper" from Danny, as in "Dad, you're such a creeper."Now, my son doesn’t really believe my husband is a stalker or predator but it seems that these days any adult can be dubbed a "creeper" merely for speaking to a child he isn’t coaching, teaching or parenting…

What a week. In the middle of interviewing someone by phone last week, I feel the house start to shake. I’m ready to light into my teenage sons for jumping in the living room and they say, "Really mom, it wasn’t us, it was an earthquake." They turn on CNN to prove it.   Three days later, on the eve of Tropical Storm Irene, the Giant supermarket on Emaus Avenue in Allentown looks like a plague of locusts had hit the produce section. The only bananas left were a couple of  black spotted ones. The red seedless grapes were decimated and the handful of Gala apples were looking like escapees.  I …

There’s a concept in social psychology that goes something like this: When other people err, we attribute it to flaws in their character; when we screw up, we blame it on circumstances – the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.So when someone else runs up credit card debt, we think “spendthrift.” When we do it, it’s because of a medical emergency and necessary student loans. Alan Jennings, executive director of the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley, says he has seen this type of thinking amplified since the economy tanked. Instead of sympathizing with those who lost their …

My idea of sweet decadence is reading a good book over a cup of strong coffee in a beautiful place. Clearly, if all Americans got their kicks this way, Las Vegas would still be a desert.     So there I was last week on the porch of a cabin on a shimmering lake in the Adirondacks, binging on Edith Wharton novels. Wharton, a searingly honest social observer, trained her laser vision on America’s upper crust society in the late 1800s, exposing the rigid social mores that kept women in gilded cages. My husband doesn’t understand my fascination with writers like Wharton and Jane Austen, who wrote …

There are some movies my family is so drawn to that when they come on television we watch them, commercials and all, even though we OWN them. How goofy is that? All we have to do is slip in the DVD and we can view them commercial-free, but no. They’re the celluloid equivalent of catnip or comfort food. In last week’s column about memorable movies, I gave short shrift to comedies because I wanted to zero in on films with good messages for kids. I’m not sure what the message is in the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail, unless it’s “Your mother is a hamster and your father smells of …

The average child costs $500,000 to raise to age 18 and the process takes great patience and energy. But, on the flip side, you get to foist your favorite movies on a captive audience. Seems like a fair trade to me.When our kids were small we started a list of the films we most wanted them to see before they went off on their own. These weren’t necessarily our all-time favorite flicks but they were memorable movies with messages we hoped they’d absorb.   My list starts with films I’d show to kids as young as 6 and progresses to movies for older teens. Most are about doing the right thing, …

In a story in the April 25 edition of The New Yorker magazine, Nancy Lieberman talked about what it was like to coach basketball in the NBA’s Development League or D-League. The 53-year-old former Olympian and pro basketball player had to find ways to connect with young, mostly African-American men who played for her on the Texas Legends. Lieberman said, “I tell these guys we have more in common than you think. Young black men don’t want to be profiled, and old white women don’t want to be profiled.” Amen to that. Young black men get profiled as dangerous and middle-aged and older white women…

The old saw “success has many parents but failure is an orphan” is never truer than when you’re dealing with actual kids. When your child brings home straight As or helps a little old lady carry her bags, it’s tempting to think “he gets that from my side of the family” or “I taught him that.”  When that same kid throws a tantrum or refuses to clean his room, we think, “Where did THAT behavior come from?” We solve the “nature vs. nurture” question of child raising by assuming if it’s a fault, he was born with it; the virtues come from us.  As the parent of teenagers, I know it’s a bit early to…

Sea Isle City on the Jersey Shore is a lot of things, but it is most certainly the Park Bench Capital of America. Its slogan should be “Sit your butt down here.” On the town’s promenade – which is essentially a boardwalk without all the rides and games – there’s a bench just about every 10 feet. Each has an inscription dedicating it to someone, often accompanied by a quote about the person’s love for Sea Isle City.  The benches are an amenity for tired pedestrians, a place to stop and talk, and a classy way of reminding people that the town is a great place to be.It’s just one of the facets …

With a memory clouded by age and Alzheimer’s, my mother-in-law had a tough time placing my husband during his most recent visit. Then all of a sudden it came to her: “Do you still live in that messy house?” Bingo. Nailed it. My husband and I had a good laugh but it’s sobering to realize that our poor housekeeping is what sticks with people--even those who love us. We are not yet candidates for the show Hoarders but that’s only because we’re HAPPY to get rid of stuff. We just can’t keep up with the influx of newspapers, magazines, junk mail, school papers and errant socks that my kids’ friends…

About a dozen people gathered at Easton’s Centre Square Monday to witness and celebrate the signing of a piece of legislation they hope will be made obsolete in their lifetime. The ordinance, signed by Easton Mayor Sal Panto, grants benefits to city employees in same-sex relationships in line with their married co-workers. Only five cities in the state – including Allentown -- have such laws and Easton is the smallest.   When the day comes that gays and lesbians are allowed to marry in Pennsylvania, the ordinance will become a relic, perhaps relegated to a museum somewhere as an example of …

My teenagers went through a brief stint in rehab this past weekend. It wasn’t long enough to cure their addiction to text messaging but it did show them they could survive without a keypad for short spurts. The place was called Whitewater Challengers because it’s primarily an outfitters that runs rafting trips through the Lehigh River Gorge near White Haven. It turns out you can’t text while paddling a raft through rapids, and a cell phone would be ruined if you get wet – which is inevitable. So the texting rehabilitation – while not listed on their brochure – was a side benefit. I wasn’t on …

 In the movie “Pretty Woman,” the beautiful hooker with a heart, played by Julia Roberts, tells the rich business tycoon embodied by Richard Gere about her childhood fantasy of being locked in a tower only to be rescued by a prince on a white horse, charging the tower with his sword drawn.  In the film’s final scene, Gere, armed with an umbrella, rides in on a white limo, climbs up a fire escape to reach her and says, “So what happened after he climbed the tower and rescued her?”  Roberts responds: “She rescues him right back.”  So, you ask, what does that have to do with adoption? Somehow …

I had been discussing school vouchers with Saucon Valley School Board member Ralph Puerta for half an hour before he hesitantly mentioned that he had a doctorate in education finance. In journalists’ parlance, that’s what is called burying the lead.By profession, Puerta is a metallurgical engineer but about a decade ago he decided to take a year off from work and get his doctorate in school finance at Lehigh University. He wasn’t planning to change careers, mind you. Rather, he’d been following the annual budget struggles of school districts and thought applying conservative accounting and …

In the early 1980s when I was living in Washington, D.C., two Irish friends spent a month visiting with me there and with friends of mine in other cities. Protestants were pretty much a foreign species to them and they had never met anyone who was Jewish or black so they were as curious as two anthropologists studying the lives of some remote Peruvian tribe. It made for great discussions over a pint or two into the wee hours of the morning. Their insulation came from growing up in a heavily Catholic country and attending Catholic schools. The Protestant minority in the Republic of Ireland …

A week ago when I asked my sons, ages 14 and 16, if they might not be a little old for an Easter egg hunt, they looked at me as if I’d shot Bambi. Too old for an egg hunt?  Never! Now some might say this is a case of arrested development, but I’d argue it’s selective arrested development at most. Their own small world and the world around them is in constant flux; they hold fast to holiday traditions to be a constant in their lives.   My kids love the smell of the turkey cooking on Thanksgiving morning and playing Risk with their cousins after a noisy meal with at least one awkward toast. And…

The envelope looked so elegant and the seal so distinguished that -- without my reading glasses on -- I took it to contain an invitation for my older son to join the National Honor Society. Maternal pride swelled as I handed him the envelope and it wasn’t until he said, “What’s the National Society of High School Scholars?” that my skeptic’s antenna went up. It turns out this particular “honor” would cost us $60, according to the letter. But that would include – drum roll please – “a free graduation honor card which is valued at $15.00.” “As you prepare your university applications, you may …

As a month of standardized testing came to a close for Lehigh Valley public schools last week, I wished the same thing I wish every year: If only more policymakers had skin in the game. Those of us with children in public schools live with the effects of well-meaning but misguided policies like the No Child Left Behind law which elevated standardized tests until they dwarfed all other tools in education.  The law was championed by Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, who sent his kids to private schools, and President George W. Bush and House Speaker John Boehner, Republicans whose children had …

Years after Jeanne Clery’s murder at Lehigh University in April 1986, a neighbor gave her mother a card that Jeanne had written to the woman’s son in first grade. It was a love letter.“Dear Brad, I love you, Jeanne,” the card said in a first-grader’s awkward scribble. “He had to wear leg braces and Jeanne was the only one in the class who never made fun of him,” said Connie Clery. “And he kept that card all those years.”The neighbor and now friend, Barbara Leve, says that kindness and independence was typical of Jeanne. “It helped [Brad] through a very hard time at a very young age,” she told…

A few years ago my brother drove my octogenarian mother to Meadville, Pa. so she could see some old friends and – good son that he is – spent two days squiring them around town. When I e-mailed to ask him if he had a good time taking three little old ladies to lunch and dinner, he wrote back: “If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone ask ‘WHAT DID SHE SAY?’ I could pay off the mortgage on your house.” When he and I trade stories about our mom, he is quick to remind me that I’m a future little old lady and will no doubt provide my sons with plenty of fodder for tales about their bossy …