I loved Mariam Gates’ post last weekend, Brave Heart, about her son’s broken arm. Mariam’s recounting of her conversation with her son – when he tells her he was not brave because he scared and was cried – is heartfelt, and the reflections she shares about what bravery really means are stirring and thought-provoking. She [...]
Last Friday the 1st grade performed their annual movement and music assembly, which this year was called the Arctic Blast. It seems like moments ago that I sat in the audience watching Grace in her 1st grade assembly (Musicians of the Sun), the morning after I threw a surprise birthday dinner for Matt. We sat [...]
I’ve learned via a couple of channels that my post last week about friendship made some others lonely. This makes me feel terrible, because one thing I am – extremely often – is lonely. I know the emotion intimately, and I hate knowing that I have contributed to others feeling it. I am so familiar [...]
“If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it’s because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.” – Kathleen Norris Email this post
Matt and I were talking about first impressions last week. We met 14 years ago, but the first things we thought of each other – and of other people we’ve met since – remain vivid. We talked about the major categories of impressions, the things that carry weight when you are first getting to know [...]
Grace is such a liminal creature right now, straddling girlhood and tweendom, the baby she was and the young woman she’s becoming at warp speed both visible in her bottomless brown eyes. I look at her and it takes my breath away, the dizzying identification, the breakneck pace with which almost 10 years have rushed [...]
Monday morning dawned clear and cold. I went out at 6:30 for my first run in six days. Last week I my first real migraine – an unwelcome return to the country of pain - and I have new respect for those of you who deal with those regularly. Then Grace, Whit and I had [...]
Dear Grace and Whit, I want to remember right now, February of 2012, this season when we see our breath in the air in the morning but still await snow whose coming seems, every day, more and more unlikely. There is so much I hope you’ll remember. The red velvet brownies I made served you [...]
So much of any year is flammable, lists of vegetables, partial poems. Orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone. Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. I begin again with the smallest numbers. Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, only the things I didn’t [...]
Your days are short here. This is the last of your springs. And now, in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of trusts, feel the hem of Heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don’t forget when you leave why you came. -Adlai Stevenson Last Friday I [...]
