Faith Gong: Beautiful Things: Haymaker Bun Co.

My adventure of choice has nothing to do with hiking trails, rock faces, or trapezes. My favorite adventure with my children is to take them to breakfast at Haymaker Bun Co. 

Faith Gong: Beautiful Things: Tri-Valley Transit

After a season in which I delved into the difficult issues of middle age, change, and raising teenagers, perhaps it’s time for something a bit more hopeful.

Faith Gong: Why you should watch ‘Bluey’

One of the effects of our children getting older is the fragmenting of our family. That sounds dramatic, but although it sometimes makes me (and the youngest siblings) a bit wistful, I’ve come to see that It’s natural and inevitable.

Faith Gong: Basketball, a love story

Around the time he turned two years old, my son began noticing basketball hoops everywhere. Driving through town, we’d be startled by periodic shouts of “Basketball!” from the backseat. 

Faith Gong: Driver’s license

I’m not the type of mother who typically makes a big deal out of my children’s major life milestones. With five children, my brain simply lacks the capacity to keep track of when everyone first walked, talked, and lost their first tooth.

Faith Gong: Looking for the light

At the close of my last column, in September 2023, I announced that I’d be taking a brief sabbatical and expressed my hope that I’d return to writing early in 2024. Well, here I am!

Faith Gong: Living the questions

There was a moment in my mid-20s when I realized that I might not have my own opinions about anything.

Faith Gong: Things we don’t talk about: The Sadness

It feels like various things at various times: a lump in the throat, a bitter feeling on my tongue, tears springing to my eyes, the sense that if you peered into my chest you’d see a visible crack running down the center of my heart. 

Faith Gong: Why you should watch ‘Barbie’

I ended up watching “Barbie” the very next night, with my two youngest daughters. And then, although I rarely see any movie in the theater once, I went back a week later and watched “Barbie” a second time, because my husband needed to see it. 

Faith Gong: Things we don’t talk about: Parenting teens

I recognized this path: I’d walked it before, and I knew it wound its way in hairpin turns along a steep ridge, so that one misstep could send you right off the mountain.

Faith Gong: My daughter, the lifeguard

My 15-year-old daughter just completed lifeguard training and will soon be looking down upon the splashing masses at our town pool from atop the official lifeguard chair. 

Faith Gong: Things we don’t talk about: Work, family and mortality

I often feel embarrassed about the seeming lack of constancy and direction in my life story. Am I simply lazy? Unmotivated? When I expressed these concerns to a friend recently, she said, “I think you’ve just had too many choices.”

Faith Gong: Things we don’t talk about: Being the anti-hero

I have an uneasy relationship in my head with singer/songwriter/cultural icon Taylor Swift.

Faith Gong: A Mother’s Day reflection on ‘The Giving Tree’

Herein lies my real beef with The Giving Tree: It’s not just that the tree’s form of giving was bad for the tree, it was also bad for the boy.

Faith Gong: On dyeing eggs… again

The thing about special holiday traditions is that they are often stressful and messy.

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