by Kevin Banet | Dec 24, 2025 | Family, Generations, Holidays
Joy From a Child’s Open Arms You wouldn’t expect a restaurant to be a place of epiphany between strangers. Yet that is just what I witnessed two days before Christmas. Our family was dining with our in-laws at a local eatery—one of those places where coffee refills...
by Kevin Banet | Dec 18, 2025 | Family, mental health
A Husband’s Birthday Wish: Drink Away, Dear Loneliness does not suddenly arrive in old age. For many people, it begins much earlier—quietly, invisibly, and often wrapped in moments that are supposed to feel joyful. Birthdays are one of those moments. They are markers...
by Kevin Banet | Sep 12, 2025 | 60's Boy, Family, Generations
Filling up the Station Wagon With Happy Faces When I was about ten or eleven — the age when a child first starts to wonder about his own beginnings — I did a little arithmetic. To my delight, I discovered that I was born an even nine months after my parents were...
by Kevin Banet | Sep 6, 2025 | Family, Generations, Reminisce
Holding the Future in My Arms Somewhere on the streets of Chicago, there walks a young woman in her late 20s. I’ll call her Mona. When she was only about a month old, I held her in my arms. But sadly, I haven’t seen her since. Before she was born, on a cold winter...
by Kevin Banet | Aug 29, 2025 | 60's Boy, Family, Generations, History, Reminisce, Senior stories
Resilience in the Face of Life’s Difficulties The other day while scrolling online, I stumbled across a meme that stopped me in my tracks. It was macabre in design — a grinning skull, dark shadows around it — with the words: “Death smiles at everyone. Only the veteran...
