Tweet I grew up in the embrace of several extended families. One of these was my godfamily. And one of these godsisters, who lives nearby, had a baby this winter. One February afternoon after school Grace, Whit and I stopped by. I parked too far away so we walked several blocks in the cold, our [...]
Tweet Since our trip to Jerusalem last year I’ve been mulling an essay about faith and the unknown and our inadequate vocabularly to talk about these things. The essay, in my head, is called “the language of mystery.” I’ve never written it. In particular, the idea came to me when we drove by a mosque [...]
Tweet There are a very few things that I am deep in the marrow of my bones. One of them is a Bostonian (I was born here, my parents live here, I met my husband here, my babies were born here, this is my home in the most essential sense of the word). Another of [...]
Tweet On Sunday, the day before Patriot’s Day and the Boston marathon, Grace ran her first road race. On the marathon course. I was in New York for work, so I missed it, but I was sent this fantastic picture. My heart swelled with both pride and shock, because really, how can my baby be [...]
Tweet I take pictures of everything. When I leaf through the last few weeks or months on iphoto or instagram, I’m reminder of countless moments that a fleeting sense of wonder startled me to stillness. When I have those experiences, my instinct is often to photograph whatever it is that caught my attention and reminded [...]
Tweet We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile. – Thoreau For as long as I can remember, I have been literal. I have almost [...]
Tweet I used to so frequently parallel process and multitask that I actually didn’t know how to sit still or to do just one thing at a time. I played Tetris during conference calls, needlepointed while watching a movie on demand, tapped out work emails while at the park with my children. It wasn’t a [...]
Tweet Lisa Ahn’s blog, Tales of Quirk and Wonder, is one of my favorite corners of the internet. Since late last summer, Lisa has been running a fascinating series about inspiration. I was both startled and hugely honored when she asked me to contribute to her series. I’m so often not inspired, is the thing. [...]
Tweet Last week I had an email exchange with my friend Jessica about the five years I spent living in London (ages 12 to 17). It was a rich, irreplaceable interval of time, full of the number 9 bus and Fruit Pastilles and Doc Marten boots and weekends riding in the Cotswolds and signing our [...]
Tweet Winter morning light on bare, snowy branches: one of the things that makes me feel most powerfully a sense of mingled doubt and faith. I think I’ve decided that I won’t have a word this year. But if I was going to have one, it’s pretty undeniable what it would be. The word doubt [...]
