The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir | | Author: Katrina Kenison
Publisher: Springboard Press
Category: Book
List Price: $23.99
Buy Used: $6.27
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Seller: goodwillny
Rating:  71 reviews
Sales Rank: 15295
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0446409480
Dewey Decimal Number: 921
EAN: 9780446409483
ASIN: 0446409480
Publication Date: September 7, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition-boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, an attempt to find a deeper sense of place, and a slower pace, in a small New England town. It is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers--holding on, letting go.
Poised on the threshold between family life as she's always known it and her older son's departure for college, Kenison is surprised to find that the times she treasures most are the ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life, the very moments that she once took for granted, or rushed right through without noticing at all.
The relationships, hopes, and dreams that Kenison illuminates will touch women's hearts, and her words will inspire mothers everywhere as they try to make peace with the inevitable changes in store.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 71
 Insightful and Resonates, but Needs Editing July 22, 2010
Mom of Three (Milwaukee, WI United States)
I appreciated the insight and fellowship I felt while reading this book since the author speaks to experiences many of us go through. She shares her journey as she and her family step out of the confines of their middle class life. I did feel this book resonated with the experience many of us feel regarding our too organized, confining, and even artificial lives as we cart our children to their extracurriculars, mold ourselves to following the schedules and expecatations of our schools, jobs, and such. And yet, the book was much too drawn out. This would be a much more powerful book if the author would sit down with a trusted editor and obtain some help distilling the book.
Good message, but a bit too long. June 27, 2010
Ohio Mom
The message in this book is to slow down, simplify your life and enjoy each day for what it is rather than what you would like it to be. A good message to be sure.
The author takes us through a time in her life where she sells the house in the suburbs and leaves her established life in a familiar community. Her family then embarks on a journey to find a new place to call home. They end up living with her parents then a dilapidated house which they end up tearing down and then rebuilding on the site, back to her parents' house and finally to the new house.
The book examines the author's relationship with her family members as well as with herself. She takes us through their metamorphasis as a family and individually during these years.
There are plenty of good observations in the book to provoke thought about what do we really need and value in life.
I found the book to be too detail oriented and a bit long for my taste so I rate it a 4 star book.
 One Mother's Memoir June 12, 2010
Tina Says (Iowa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir by Katrina Kenison is making me feel extremely guilty right now. My girls are testing my patience lately....the usual kid stuff - not listening, not doing anything that I ask, fighting with each other.....and then I read Kenison's book and I am reminded to remember the simple things in life. Kenison doesn't try to act like her family life is perfect, either. Her boys are growing up and there is the usual rebellion that teenagers subject their parents to. She fondly remembers the boys' growing up years, perhaps wishing to go back to the years when her sons were smaller and needed her more.
This memoir shows a family who is transitioning to an empty nest, who has moved to a new home, new town, and is making new friends and finding their way. And most of all, in this book Kenison shares her own fears and worries for her children, something mothers everywhere will be able to relate to. Reading this book may not give me all the answers about how to raise my own children, or how to not lose my patience with their constant bickering, yet I feel like I did get something out of this book, that Kenison's own admissions were helpful to me. That her ability to share her feelings help validate my own.
Kenison has written one other book, Mitten Strings for God that I will be looking for, and I look forward to any of her future work and finding out what she and her family are up to.
 Too long winded and self indulgent for me June 6, 2010
Avid Reader (Kennerdell, PA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a dedicated mother of 3 sons -- 14, 19, and 22 -- I am wondering what will be my position in life after they have all graduated and moved on. After 22 years of motherhood, what am I supposed to be? I bought this book based on the reviews that said it was a wonderful book in which the author asks herself the same question. While there were pieces of wisdom in this book, I found them to be very deeply hidden in endless, wordy descriptions of houses, moving, childhood memories, etc. I read the first half of the book but skimmed the remainder simply to get to the end; the writing was just too self-indulgent for me.
Thought provoking, but indulgent June 4, 2010
K. AABRAM (USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was drown to this book after I viewed her reading an excerpt from her book on YouTube. As a mother of six I found her questions about parenting to be relevant and thought provoking. I appreciated her serious reflection about what it means to love & support our children into adulthood. She asks good questions. She is an excellent writer, but goes overboard with her details. What I didn't like is that it is easy to write (when your affluence has provided you children with all kinds things, lessons, private education & experiences) that perhaps they didn't need all that stuff. She is in search of simplicity and never really arrives. By the end of her memoir, she still views "simplicity" as a "simple" custom home on acreage in New Hampshire where, poor thing, she can't hire a landscape artist. She view "simplicity" as getting rid of excessive Christmas decorations, having soup together on a wintery day . . . in the end I found her to be trite and overly influenced by her yoga classes. I am sad for her. She seems to have too much time on her hands. Because she is constantly thinking about herself and her simplicity, she never really gets below the surface. One more note- I thought, based on the title of her first book, that she is a Christian. She isn't, at least she didn't come across as one. So if your a Christian, looking for a Christian perspective, you won't find it here.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 71
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