Empty Nests: Rediscovering Your Own Wings

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the August 27, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

    I will re-experience the empty nest when our grandson, Colin, leaves home for college next fall. When my nest first emptied, after my youngest daughter left for college, I was caught up in a whirlwind of  my own leavings. I had just sold our family home, was finishing graduate school, and had just begun my first full-time job in over twenty-five years. I remember swallowing my tears whole as I brought the last carload of freshmen gear into my daughter’s dorm. I successfully ignored a wrenching as the loss of everyday motherhood tore me in two. It had been biting at my heels for three years as our life as a family tore itself apart in a divorce.

Do You Believe In Magic?

Librarian April Cushing is head of Adult and Information Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column published in the March 5, 2015 issue of the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

It all started when my 29-year-old called in a panic asking if I had her college diploma. Having accepted a job in London, she had quit her current job, sublet her Brooklyn apartment, and applied for a visa to work abroad. Now she needed to provide proof that she had actually graduated.

I was pretty sure the document was stashed in one of the boxes of Abby’s stuff I had saved, along with multiple containers of memorabilia from my other three girls. While not exactly a hoarder, I seem to be incapable of discarding anything that might turn out to have some sentimental value during my children’s lifetimes, or possibly their descendants'. You just never know.

Up North or Down East in Maine

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the August 13, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

    I moved away from Massachusetts as a young child and returned for a long visit at the age of 19. Here in New England as a young adult, the Boston Bruins and fried clams had me at hello. I also fell in love with a Boston boy, which I don’t entirely regret because he was the reason I returned to live in Massachusetts a year later.

    I quickly picked up New England slang and colloquiums like “packy” and “wicked” and “the Gahden.”  However, I never quite got the hang of “down Purity” or “down Zayre’s”.  It seemed a disgusting grammatical habit of my group of Bostonian relatives and friends to leave out the prepositions "to" or “at.” No one cared about my annoying complaints, though. Purity Supreme and Zayre’s eventually disappeared as they were swallowed up by competitors and the habit seemed to disappear with the 20th Century.

Wait! I Need to Finish Procrastinating

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the August 6, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I don’t remember exactly when I recognized one of my most annoying behavioral traits, procrastination. In all likelihood, I picked the horrid habit up as a child or teenager. It wasn’t until I was in college, however, that I truly realized it was plaguing my life.

In college, most of us seemed to fall into two camps.  There were those who had their papers stacked up in advance all semester, ready to hand in on the due date.  And, there were those of us who wait until the last day, hour, or minute. I genuinely admired the first type and identified with the second.