Valerie Schultz
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VALERIE SCHULTZ: In love, committed and gay: Why can't my daughter get married?
Delightful news has come our way: the first of our daughters is engaged. At 25, she has found her true love, her soul mate, the person to whom she is ready to promise the rest of her life. Our family is so happy for them: we think they are, as they say in "Sleepless in Seattle," "MFEO" (Made For Each Other). Our daughter is immersed in details: dresses and guest lists, menus and venues. She is an artist, and has already designed a handmade invitation. For a girl who used to read bride magazines for fun, this is a magical time.
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VALERIE SCHULTZ: 'Who are you' is a deeper question
Several nights ago, my daughter and her friend were reliving their childhoods by watching an old TV episode of "Goosebumps." Based on the popular books by R.L. Stine, "Goosebumps" premiered in the mid-1990s. When the series first aired, my daughter was not allowed to watch it, due to its propensity to induce predawn nightmares in young children. I have since learned that her older sisters used to let her watch it with them when they were baby-sitting her, because they didn't want to miss a single thrilling story. Parents are often the last to know.
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VALERIE SCHULTZ: Missing dad not as painful as forgetting him
The U.S. Navy has taken good care of my dad, a former sailor, even in death. At his funeral in July, an honor guard of three young sailors came to the cemetery, to present my mother with an American flag. Then one of them played taps as we laid my dad to rest. Three months later, the Navy delivered a grave marker for their old quartermaster signalman, a simple bronze plaque that memorializes my dad's name and rank and pertinent dates. I went to see the marker last week, with my mother and three of my siblings. I think our dad rests peacefully knowing he is forever identified as a sailor.
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Valerie Schultz: Credit cards are a hard habit to break
"Temperature's rising / Fever is high
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Valerie Schultz: All girls should have a blank canvas
When my daughter was organizing and packing her things before moving to Portland, I noticed a large box in the corner full of notebooks. "What are those?" I asked, thinking they were old school assignments that she might not want to keep. "Those are my journals," she said.
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VALERIE SCHULTZ: Tacking on an annoyance tax at the garage sale
A garage sale is a commitment to decluttering your life. It's also a way to get adult children to go through the boxes they've been storing in your garage indefinitely. And you make some cash, even though you are selling things for a fraction of what you paid for them back when you had to have them. As summer wound down, my husband and I placed a garage sale ad in the paper.
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Valerie Schultz: Baby all grown up, but mom's not quitting just yet
If my daughter had been on time for her birth, she would have turned 18 six days ago. Instead, because she took her time emerging into the cold world, her 18th birthday is today, Oct. 15. It seems like it should be a milestone.
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Valerie Schultz: Taking nothing with us? God always comes along
"Jesus summoned the Twelve and ... sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He said to them, "Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic."
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Valerie Schultz: Healthy debate undermined by pettiness
As I drove to work the other morning with the radio tuned to a clip of President Obama's speech to the recent United Nations Assembly in New York City, my heart swelled with pride. How good for an American to know that our president is an eloquent, thoughtful, balanced, articulate, gracious, cogent, practical, grammatical and intelligent man. He conveys a sensibility that is both calming and inspiring. In my mind I started composing a thank-you note to the president, expressing my gratitude for how he represents the very best of us, especially on the international stage.
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Valerie Schultz: A wedding without God?
Our daughter's best friend got married over Labor Day weekend. It was a beautiful wedding in beautiful Monterey, where the newlyweds live. The wedding theme was oceanic and tropical: the bridesmaids in slim strapless aqua dresses, carrying vivid orange bouquets, and the bride's aqua shoes exactly matching the dresses. Times have changed enough so that no one looked twice at the bride's tattooed shoulders rising above her formal wedding gown. The weather was balmy; the food delectable; the dancing lively; the company topnotch.
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Valerie Schultz: Layoffs -- the waiting isn't the hardest part, but it's close
Certified mail is a rarity in our house. Our business affairs are not nearly pressing enough to require such elaborate arrangements. So I went last May to the post office to sign for and pick up the item addressed specifically to me with a certain amount of pleasant anticipation.
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Valerie Schultz: This 9/11, honor the best of America
It's hard to believe, unless you lost a loved one on that nightmarish day in 2001, that the multiple tragedies of Sept. 11 happened eight years ago. Time flies for those who are not in mourning for a friend, a spouse, a parent, a sibling, or a child.
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Valerie Schultz: Fluffy romance novel is busy mind's vacation
When I was in college, my roommate turned me on to Georgette Heyer novels. After we'd spent the semester wading through thick textbooks overflowing with classical and modern plays, dramatic theory, literary criticism, philosophy and theology, she lent me one of her stowed-away "trashy novels", thereby giving me permission to romp in the frothy surf of Regency romance.
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Valerie Schultz: Weapon against cancer? It's a shot in the dark
Childhood vaccinations are a complicated affair. There is pressure on parents, from both the medical and educational establishments, to accept every newly invented vaccination unquestioningly. Thus it is an unnerving moment for a parent to sign an official waiver for a "mandatory" vaccination for a child. The opinion pieces available online and in popular magazines and medical journals support contrary positions. The school nurse tends to disapprove of your action. You are left wondering if you will ever feel entirely certain of your decision.
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Valerie Schultz: You are not alone, say readers who have lost parents
I often get e-mails, and sometimes actual letters in the mail, replying to columns I have written. Some praise me, usually more than I deserve, for taking a minority position on a controversial issue. Some take me to task, also usually more than I deserve, for the same thing.
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Valerie Schultz: Having this hubby an expensive hobby in itself
My husband just got back from climbing Mount Whitney, a four-day expedition with a friend during which he was out of cell phone range and loving every minute of it. Perhaps the urge to get away from civilization is a male trait: I mean, I look forward to and benefit from times of solitude and reflection, but I do not want to drop off the face of the earth. And I definitely don't want to be unreachable by my children. I know that he feels he is a better man because of these periodic disappearances. So I smile, kiss him goodbye, and hope nothing majorly bad happens while he is gone. My husband is such an enthusiastic and eclectic person that I feel like a spoilsport asking the next question: Why do his hobbies have to be so expensive?
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Valerie Schultz: A tribute to the greatest man in one family's life
(Author's note: My father died on the Fourth of July. The following eulogy for my dad is a shortened version of a cooperative family effort. It was read by the firstborn, my brother, at our dad's funeral on July 10. While it is surreal and very awful to be fatherless, many friends who have buried a parent assure me that the days will get easier. But the sense of loss, they say, will never really go away. It will make itself felt at random and sometimes inopportune moments. I miss my dad hourly. Still, I know that, even though my dad has gone from this world, he rests in the hands of our loving God.)
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Valerie Schultz: Our prisons can handle terrorists just fine, thank you
One of the reasons some Americans voted for President Obama last November was because he campaigned on the promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, which has drawn international criticism for almost eight years for detaining people indefinitely, some without ever being charged.
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Californians have shown their true colors in politics
What does it mean to be a Californian? If you travel to another state in the union, you soon discover the mystique that permeates California. It is perceived as a land of glamour and possibility and ease, where movie stars congregate on street corners, where the weather statewide is always like a good day in San Diego. Along with its citrus crop, California exports fresh ideas, good vibes and the latest flairs in fashion.
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School's out for our clan -- just another stop on life's highway
The white graduation gown waited in the wings all week for the big event. I had dutifully tumbled it in the dryer to take out the wrinkles. Ready to float behind her as she walked onto the stage to accept her diploma, it hung in my daughter's bedroom like a ghost, like an invitation to sentimentality, catching my eye every time I walked past her door. The thoughts arrived unbidden: Can she really have grown up so fast? Remember how she posed on the porch with her Pocahontas backpack on her first day of school? How did all that time slip through my careless fingers?
