Great Life Gifts

Danny, my four-year-old, had the right idea to buy birthday cake. After all, it was my mother's 78th. This time last year we celebrated her birthday with a phone call to her room at an Iowa nursing home. This year, we celebrated it in her apartment at our house. We are among 51.4 million  American families  who have two or more generations living under the same roof. Some ethnic groups, such as Hispanics and Asians , have always encouraged these type of living arrangements. It is a cultural strength to maintain strong family bonds.Caucasian Americans have become more accepting of the arrangement as a consequence of the economy and, in the last two years, multi-generational housing arrangements have grown by 25 percent, My mother grew up in a multi-generational household with her parents, two brothers, and my great-grandmother. When you ask my mother who taught her to knit, she'll tell you her grandmother. While this arrangement might have had its challenges for my grandm