Historical November–December 2025 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Anyone who knows me or has read this column knows that I am no fan of winter.
This year, however, I am trying to have a better attitude and concentrate on what makes me happy instead of how bleak the weather will be.
These past months have been good personally. Both of my girls are home for a while, and although Sarah’s return was precipitated by a fall and some broken vertebrae (she is perfectly fine now), I have loved having them both with me. Not only do I love the activity and company in the house, but because Sarah is between jobs, I have been hiring her to do the many things in my house that I have dropped the ball on.
I don’t even want to admit that I stopped stripping the woodwork in the house (mid process) when I got pregnant with Emily. That was 34 years ago!!
It is interesting to discuss perspectives on what is acceptable in different cultures in terms of cohabitation. Americans seem to think that a family is a failure if we do not launch our children out in the world to live and work on their own at a pretty young age, where other cultures are perfectly comfortable with multi-generational living. That is also another thing I love about our neighborhood.
There are so many families here that are second and even third generation. At one point, the two houses next to ours were friends that Andy grew up with as a child.
I have loved knowing the parents of our friends and then getting to watch the children of our friends grow.
Some of them even move back into the neighborhood (if they can afford it).
I have lived here so long that my mother-in-law once asked if a neighbor was in the grade school class after me.
I had to remind her that although it seems like Andy and I got married in grade school, in fact we did not.
But that is what is so wonderful about Skinker DeBaliviere.
There are so many people that have stayed in the neighborhood so long that I do feel like I grew up here. Let’s continue to make our newer neighbors feel like that as well. Not necessarily that they grew up here, but that they consider us a multigenerational family living together.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November–December 2025.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2025_11.pdf, printed page(s) 2; PDF page(s) 2.
