Author: Sean O’Connor
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Here’s to the good teachers who change our lives for the better
Watching my son progress through the schooling system has been an occasion for rage and despair, as he has weaved between the star teachers.
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Goodbye, dear old plum tree, and thank you for the shade
What a tree you have been, dear Plum. You stood for our family. You stood up for us and supported our growth. But, finding myself alone in this rambling, overstuffed home, you must make way now. Things have changed.
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A postcard from home is love in its purest form
When my children, aged 14 and 11, left with their mother to stay in Germany for a year, it was always going to be hard, for all of us. The children had just spent four months in my solitary care, and my house is now very quiet and empty, although littered with the evidence of…
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I tie people up in tape for a living, & I love it
I have had to forcibly remind myself in moments both good and bad, that things change, that times of both abundance and scarcity don’t last.
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A change is as good as a haircut
Younger sister had to consciously shift her understanding of who her brother was. She flushed, proud of him, as I watched her watching him. He was no longer the smelly older brother, but had transformed into a handsome young man.
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This is the year when I learn to make friends with my money
Budgeting is a beast that remains alone in a faraway cave. I need to coax it out, and make a frank reckoning of where I want to be, financially, in 10 years’ time. This will take unusual courage.
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How a Secret Santa Solved All My Christmas Gift Worries
I think it’s a dark art, matching people with things they didn’t know they didn’t need until you gave it to them.
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Life is the art of making it up as you go along
One thing that people seem to realise is that improv is very good for collaboration and strengthens relationships. Personally, as I face a huge prospect of change, with my children attending school in another country, I use the first law of improvisation: ‘let go.’
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My Old Clothes Aren’t Hand-Me-Downs, They’re Lift-Me-Ups
A change in clothing has accompanied every phase of my life, as it has for my children. Nappies were their welcome-pants to life, but are mercifully no more. Now, I take deliveries of clothing from my sister and others, some which we parted from and which have returned.
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Talking to Your Kids About the Ultimate Taboo
Children are exposed to death, and need support to understand the sudden absence of a loved one, as does everyone. I have come to see that children are more candid and less guarded than their adults, and that there is much to learn from them.