Because I am apparently a masochist who needed to come down from feeling pretty good about writing after a writing class, I am simultaneously reading I’m Just Happy to Be Here by Janelle Hanchett and Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell. Both…
As a kid, on bitter winter mornings, when we clustered around the woodstove elbowing each other, “Mom!”-ing and “Not fair!”-ing, we would hush and huddle during the morning news report of school closures. “All Miami County schools are closed due to inclement road…
As a parent I spend too little time when I am with my children considering the impact of my actions and reactions and too much time fretting about it when I am not around them. My brain spins on the harshness of some…
Note: This post began months ago over Labor Day weekend. For reasons noted below it was not posted until mid-November. Sandy needed a weekend away. For him, backpacking provided solace and restoration, so in spite of the kids’ activities on Saturday morning, we…
I’m midway through reading Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle, and I do not want to stop. I want to swallow this book whole the way I have so many more before it. She sings to me, even in the differences of our lives,…
In my Pilates personal training studio class – and right there you already know so much about me – my instructor, a stunning woman who clearly practices what she preaches, adorned in matching compression tights and workout top, advised us to close our…
My parents moved to a sliver of farmland in Indiana in 1974. I was four. They were 27. Within three years, when I was seven, they had crafted a greenhouse business in the middle of nowhere, from an improbable notion, and an incomprehensible…
Don’t worry, I’m not pregnant. My eggs are poached and my womb was removed a couple of years ago. No, it’s someone else: a colleague of mine’s sister. Her sister has only told my colleague, because she’s “mature” and afraid to tell anyone…
Parenting children and care-taking critters requires a certain flexibility with mayhem. Some people handle it like life-time surfers, head-first diving into the next unpredictable wave. Others manage with a Lord of the Flies approach, letting it all settle out on its own. We…