Generosity. And true giving. That's what I've learned most from my mom. Yes, she is extremely giving of things, with a fierce commitment to equality. Mom still makes sure the dollar amount, the number of packages, the size of those packages AND the height of the stack are equal at Christmas. For the past 45 years, she’s been keeping a running tally of every holiday and every non-holiday gift. My sister and I still joke about this, how Mom is still keeping score even though we’re not. I don’t ever remember comparing our piles. Maybe I would though, had there ever been an opportunity to feel th ..read more

We ran barefoot most of the summer and took pride in who could walk across the hot pavement and not flinch. I tried, like my cousins, to not even slow down when we reached Aunt Ruth’s gravel driveway. Rockfoot we called it. My sister had it best. But not in Grandpap’s basement. Always shoes in Grandpap’s basement, where metal shavings and grease made the floor. I would beg him to work down there, just to be surrounded by all his massive machinery, the workings of which were a fantastic mystery. He started his company shortly after the Great Depression, named with great pride after his wife, m ..read more

The Tear and the Fray Only one thing to do  in the tear and the fray. As it shreds and it bends,  pulls the breath from my days. Now mending the fiber  in a well-woven past,  truths once felt a constant  slip like clouds from my grasp. I want no sword. No rage.  Not regret. Nor not spite. No sorrow that strangles steals dark from the night.  I am here. RIght here. Peel the layers. Still me. With a bearing hard set  towards how to be free from a fight that is futile; one that grief brings to bear.  And be now the woman  who will long last my years.  Only one thing to do  in the tear and ..read more

The birthday party was going to be phenomenal. He stood over me explaining how his wife had to bake three cakes  - three! - because they invited the kids in both classes. I lay trapped in tubes and wires and blankets and gowns while his words passed through the air above me; he wasn’t really talking to me anyway. Some people might think they were going overboard for a four-year-old. Other people might. Not anyone in this room of course. Radiologists rule in this room. I stared at the ceiling thinking What in the ---- is happening here? as the masked techs oohed and awed over those cakes and th ..read more

There are some people - a few, those thoughtful ones - that see big moments in the glimpse of a day. Those that realize that we are spinning on a globe, as it rotates around the sun, each of us along our own thread of time. Time that is happening, right now. It’s happening in the mist as we hike with a friend. Happening at a meeting at work. As we make dinner. And for my 17-year-old nephew, Hayden, it’s happening as he plays baseball. Like all his teammates, he wants to win. He’s playing to compete, to contribute his best. But at the same time, he sees that thread of time for himself, for m ..read more

An unabashed rejection of the meaningless We all divide our time between chores and pleasures that shape who we are in the short little blip of time we get to call our one and only life. We all know that our time is limited – newsflash, 100% of us are going to reach the end sometime. But it wasn’t until I fully accepted that the arc of my life has a descending limb, one that I am riding downward, that I truly started considering the value in how I spend my time. It’s a new lens on the same picture, refracting a new light to reveal the raw honesty in what has worth and what does not. A rea ..read more

I am searching for the present. For how to be whole in the simple beauties of now instead of torn by what isn’t here yet.  I am working to experience time at its own pace, to not lose time by constantly chronicling its rate of passing. It is a common sense that some days I find impossible. And other days, when I fight hard enough - with will or gratitude, meds or love - I find myself here by surprise. Here, solely in the now with the smell of the earth under my bare feet, with the scent of lilacs blooming late after a cold spring. Here, feeling a breeze that just kisses the skin and the mosqui ..read more

When I was a little kid, my mom would sit on my bed and play with my hair or tickle my back as she tucked me in at night. When I could tell she was fidgeting to leave, I’d throw out some random sleepy sentence to keep her around. Moms love that. They’ll drop everything for your words if there’s a chance for some new insight. But actually, my insightless, random words were a distraction, a tactic, so that I could reach out slowly - so slowly she wouldn’t even know I was moving - and grab a small pinch of the fabric of her clothes. I’d hold tight. Tight as I could.  And only then, assured that s ..read more

Generosity. And true giving. That's what I've learned most from my mom. Yes, she is extremely giving of things, with a fierce commitment to equality. Mom still makes sure the dollar amount, the number of packages, the size of those packages AND the height of the stack are equal at Christmas. For the past 45 years, she’s been keeping a running tally of every holiday and every non-holiday gift. My sister and I still joke about this, how Mom is still keeping score even though we’re not. I don’t ever remember comparing our piles. Maybe I would th ..read more

Well, it’s happened again. I wake up to find that my sheets have turned into adhesive. I have become a sticker, ruthlessly stuck to my bed. But I know what to do. I pull at the edges, trying to peel myself awake.  Because if I pull myself up now, I’ll have time for coffee with Jon ..read more