Relationships are the spiritual web of our lives. The crucial strands are family, friends, community, nature, and the wider world. In this life-affirming paperback, the award-winning Boston Globe columnist Linda Weltner has gathered together pieces written over the past 16 years. She has organized them around her roles as daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and grandmother.
You have to love a woman who showers with the dog, cooks everything on high, and refers to a common middle age occurrence as "Five Extra Pounds." With humor and consistently clear insights, Linda Weltner shares the challenges of family life as a member of the sandwich generation: the struggle to grow closer to her mother, to accept the eccentricities of her father, to deal with a mother-in-law's rejection, to recognize how her husband has changed over time, and to rejoice in a second childhood occasioned by grandchildren.
Weltner's honesty is refreshing and her search for meaning is inspiring. "Being human," Michael Ignatieff once observed, "takes practice." This columnist is good at it. She opens up our hearts as she tries to understand gratitude, nurturing, small acts of kindness, patience, and questions as a form of love. Family Puzzles by Linda Weltner reveals how relationships become a major resource in our personal and spiritual development.