Seven months. Articles and books talk about this “transition,” from raising children to parenting around the edges, but it seems to be different for everyone. Every child. When my first daughter went off to make her own life, I was a bit lost, and my heart ached, but I was raising two other people. Distraction…
I bought my children new shoes for the first day of school and when they returned after winter break. Twice a year. Every year. In the budget or beyond the budget, they had new gleaming white tennis shoes as they marched into class for a new and improved quarter, semester, year. There were years Michael…
Being a mother is difficult work. Not in the sense that running a marathon or skiing a black diamond is difficult and not in the sense that finishing a project or painting window trim is work. Motherhood, the act of “moming,” is difficult work because if you are anything like me it is predominantly blind…
Jack had a bath today. My youngest turned sixteen at the end of February, and then two weeks later my son turned nineteen, and a couple months before that my oldest bought her first car . . . on her own. But, Jack had a bath today. This is what I like to call Look Over…
It’s Memorial Day, again. Honestly, as I get older sometimes things become rote. Here we go again, another Easter, it’s time for Halloween again. As we move into summer, it’s another long weekend of flags, boats heading to the lake, and the smell of coals burning. More often than not, when I get in these modes, slip…
This is my mom. Time does things to people. We change as we get older, and yet I think being a mother brings out the very best of who we were when we were little. We want our children to have their dress up times. We want them to sing into the Mr. Microphone and…
She had never wanted to grow up, but it happened without her permission. She was tradition, roots, a tender, the oldest, she was calm. Life moved along and as society would dictate, she tried to keep up, be the person she was supposed to be. She ran faster, pushed up, made up, drank up and somewhere along the…
There was a young woman at Whole Foods tonight in a wheelchair. She looked like she may have been recently released from the hospital. I instinctively recognized the telltale bandages, tape, and that weak, but happy to be out, look. She was smelling the natural soap slices with her brother, maybe her boyfriend. She was smiling and I stood…
I used to carry a big purse. I would pride myself on being able to shove anything in my purse. I had wipes, napkins, a big wallet with checks, Band-Aids, water, extra laces, Sharpies. Everything anyone could ever need. I would sometimes shove a book in there. I liked having lots of stuff. I wasn’t…