Some machinery does not operate well above a certain temperature. And by “some machinery,” I mean specifically me. Me. I do not operate well above a certain temperature. I melt, I wilt, I become irritable, sweaty, and an all-around cranky mess in the heat. I can barely function, let alone be expected to participate in… Continue reading Pretending
My mother read Little House in the Big Woods to me when I was young. It’s the first book I remember hearing aloud, and I adored it. Of all the Little House series, that one remains my favorite and the one from which I remember the stories most vividly. I read it to myself many… Continue reading He Remembers That We Are Dust
My husband and I went to a wedding this weekend. We got to see some family we hadn’t seen in a while, catch up a little. It was a lovely venue and honestly miraculous weather. Seventy degrees and sunny squeezed in between days in the forties on one side and snow showers on the other.… Continue reading The Joy of It
It was dusk, and already getting dark under the tree canopy, and we still had a couple hundred yards to go on the trail. Laura and Jacob were rushing on towards the trailhead parking area, and Tray was somewhere in the middle, trying not to lose sight of either them or me, as I was… Continue reading Love and Light
I stopped writing when Mom died. There were lots of reasons, so many things that needed to be done. We were all working so hard to settle Mom’s estate quickly, get the car sold, get the house cleaned out and sold, get everything wrapped up. We didn’t know what we might need to take care… Continue reading Pointing to the Light
When we were cleaning out Mom’s kitchen, I found a slip of carefully folded paper in one of the drawers. Along with tape and batteries and notepads and address booklets, she had kept something from when I was 7 years old. In second grade, they apparently gave my class placement and IQ tests, and my… Continue reading The Lessons Keep Coming
My husband and I just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Thirty years. There’s something about those decade numbers that just make them sound so very large. Three entire decades. How can this be? Young me had no idea what this would look like. In truth, young me was pretty surprised about the whole getting married… Continue reading Did Not See That Coming
My mind isn’t working quite like usual. When I step aside, and look at myself objectively, I can see that. I can see myself wanting to join into conversations but being a step off. I can see myself having to bring my attention back to a task again and again. I can see myself just not being myself. It’s like… Continue reading Maybe this is Grief
Two weeks ago today, we were holding Mom’s graveside service. I looked at the calendar and did a few mental calculations to be sure it was then, because it feels like it could have been just yesterday, or maybe a year ago. Time has taken on that strange, erratic behavior that time has during crisis… Continue reading Do Not Think About the Loss
That’s the joy of no-longer-kids. After years of scanning the shelves – looking past the self-centeredness of childhood, trying not to scrutinize the morass of adolescence too closely, blinking in surprise at the fledgling adult emerging – you realize that the person standing before you IS exactly what you were looking for.
