Most mornings, I walk Grace and Whit into their respective school buildings. Occasionally, if I have to make it to an early meeting or something, I do “live drop off” instead, letting them hop out of the car while I idle at the curb. For some reason this always brings tears to my eyes. There’s [...]
I always think of their shoulder blades as wings. Their wings, poking through their skin. And his little back has two freckles on it now, marks marring his white, skim-milk skin, my skin. Life beginning to make its mark on my child. The wings, though, are on my mind today. The wings. This past winter [...]
I’m particularly aware right now of the intensely opposed polarities that exist, both uneasily and audaciously, in every single minute of my life. It is by turns exhausting and reassuring to hold these contradictions in my hand. Those who are close to me know me intimately and yet not at all; I, too, still stumble [...]
A while ago I wrote about how I often stopped before things got hard, doubted in some fundamental way that I was not enough for a task in front of me. I want to clarify something important about this. First, I’m not sure that my resistance to really pushing myself – whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, [...]
I spent the month of October in pain. First an injury, and then an illness, each of which is particularly painful in their individual categories. Not at all fun. I realized how little physical pain I’ve had in my life, with gratitude and also guilt – how could I not have appreciate all those many, [...]
I did a one-week “cleanse” in July and am finishing, this weekend, a one-month version. Personally I think “cleanse” has become one of those words, like “cultural fit” (in my work life), which is so commonly used, in so many different contexts, as to be almost entirely devoid of meaning. So let me be more [...]
Both Grace and Whit recite the standard “now I lay me down to sleep …” prayer before bed. They usually add on some sentences which always, without exception, are a litany of “thank you”s. I have not coached them here. After all, as I’ve shared, Grace and Whit are the people who taught me that [...]
(the streak of an airplane in the gloaming, observed by Grace on our new tradition, the Noticing Things Evening Walk) Yesterday morning I attended a talk by Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn at Grace and Whit’s school. Having read and enjoyed Jon and Myla’s book, Everyday Blessings, I was eager to hear them in person. Jon [...]
I am one of two girls. My sister and I grew up in a world where we knew – what absolute certainty – that we could grow up to do or be whatever we wanted. Careers I wanted to pursue at various times in my childhood: doctor, Marine, writer, Supreme Court justice, marathoner. The only [...]
Grace came home from a day of her second week of third grade with two announcements. The first was that this year she had Mrs. S for music, who also taught me, back in the dark ages. The second was that they were learning Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game. Whit, with his uncanny ability to suss [...]
