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.
In July 2001, Tim McGraw had a hit single called “Angry All the Time.” It was from his Set This Circus Down album, and it was a cover of a song originally written and recorded by Bruce Robison in 1998. The song was about a marriage falling apart. A man remembering the woman he loved,… Continue reading In the Words of a Country Music Song
Twenty-five years ago this month, I became a mother. I’ve never done anything else in my life that was so instantaneously earth-shattering. The memories of that first year are a mixture of hours and days that flew by in an exhausted blur, and moments that seem etched on my mind – holding her as she… Continue reading Show Her the Way Home
My parenting job changed again without me realizing it. And there I was, feeling like I was finally starting to get pretty good at the current job, never noticing that I wasn’t needed anymore in that position. It always seems to change just when I feel like I might be getting the hang of it.… Continue reading The Coach
To my kids, Christmas smells like cinnamon bread, warm spiced almonds and cashews, and kettle corn. Also, sausages with peppers and onions cooking on giant flat top grills. That’s because we used to go to Dollywood every year at Christmas time. If you’ve never been – either to Dollywood, or specifically to Dollywood’s Christmas –… Continue reading Smoky Mountain Christmas
The very first Halloween costume my daughter had, when she was just five months-old, was a lamb costume. It was full body, made of faux wool with little patches of tan on the feet to indicate hooves. The headpiece was separate and velcroed under the chin, and it was topped with sweet little lamb’s ears… Continue reading Little Lamb
I was never a fan of the Proverbs 31 woman. You know the one – that fearsome, do-it-all creature who rises and goes and bargains and buys and makes and feeds and never, ever stops. I developed a grievance against her many years ago when I heard one too many Father’s and Mother’s Day sermons… Continue reading That Woman
We had breakfast in the mountains Saturday morning. We packed our chairs, and the Coleman stove, and the little cook table, the night before. We rose at an indecent hour for a Saturday to bake a casserole and fill thermoses with coffee. Then we drove for over an hour as the sun began to lighten… Continue reading Breakfast in the Mountains
