Category: Family

What happens when things fall apart

When Things Fall Apart Quote Pema Chodron - To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest

“The middle way is wide open, but it is tough going…” Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart One of the loneliest feelings I’ve ever felt is feeling lost in the middle of heartache. That heartache has taken all kinds of shapes in my life. Right now it’s the shape of unresolved family issues. They continue…

That’s Not Me

Don't type Angry - that's not me

In reading the pile of reports the school sent over regarding my youngest child, I thought: that’s not me. On every occasion in parenting, I am reminding how very few people I encounter — whether as friends or acquaintances — who really understand me. They do exist, and they are ridiculously loyal. But the by…

An Ode to Sally, on her 50th

Howlips & Cabezas With Dogs

Who is Sally thinking about today? Her daughters. Her friends. Faith. Her mom. Dan, of course. On any given Friday, Sally jumps to the beat of love. Sally moves to move you, drives to inspire you. A Monday morning dawns and she Breaks out of the blocks, running down The day’s, the week’s, the season’s…

Mizzle, Again, Without You

Mizzle Loneliness Engliand

I experienced mizzle, again, tonight. This time, without you. Our first mizzle draped the English town of Dover at night. Friends’ laughs echoed in our wake. A mizzle clouded all the air space, As we strolled under repeating Streetlights from B&B to seafood joint. We arrived damp, the standard condition of Englishness. Our second mizzle–…

Our Famous Monkey Bread Recipe

monkey bread recipe

Ok, enough people have now asked for our family’s monkey bread recipe that I thought it was time to just post it here for all the world to enjoy. (Let’s be real: I keep misplacing my own copy of it, which itself is covered in butter and getting increasingly difficult to read). NOTE: This is FULL…

Hypnotized by the Mundane

Wild and precious life Mary Oliver

Life is wild. Though… It is sometimes hard to see it. Especially since life can masquerade as being quite mundane. Get up. Go to work. Go to bed. Go to work again. Make food. Eat food. Wash dishes. Make food again. Laundry. Laundry. Laundry. Even the most thrilling parts of life – like taking a…

I’ll always remember you 2014

Sparkler meaning of auld lang syne

My mother was not sentimental. She saw the world in a very pragmatic way. If you were not feeling happy, well… just cheer up. If you were feeling ill… well, wait awhile. Things were bound to change. The Meaning of Auld Lang Syne I wished I’d asked my mom more questions about her own level…

On My Mother’s Island

All of life is a thing marked and used.This is the island where my mother is still living. There is not a great deal of the “normal” here. We are just a bunch of hangers on. For those of us here, we are eating off the breadcrumb trail from whence we came. There is a lot…

After the End of the World

After the doctor broke the news to my mom and dad and me that mom would die soon, I held onto the 15 cent spiral notebook like it was a life raft. There isn’t enough time to ask and get answers to the really big questions in life before life says “I’m outta here.” It…

This is home

Happy at Happy Joe's in LeClaire

Two flights, five burgers at the Atlanta TGI Friday’s airport location. A bag of gummy Lifesavers, and of course, the real lifesavers: four headsets, an iPad and two iPhones with digital movies. One hour’s drive, and we are home. By home, I mean. HOME. Not Iowa, the place I grew up. I mean: here. Connecticut.…

10 Reasons to Travel Back in Time

This past weekend, I had the chance to return to a place I once considered home: Kansas City. By home, I mean it was the place where I became the person I am now. I lived in Kansas City from the ages of 24 to 34. For those 10 years, I was single, except 2…

Being Out There Again – #reverb13 – Day 5

Standing at the Precipice by Charkrem on Flickr

The brutal impact of self-censorship Right now, you are experiencing with me my biggest risk of 2013. Back in 2009, after the kids came to live with us, the kids’ attorney advised me to consider cutting back on my online presence. I was shocked. I felt sick. It hadn’t occurred to me that the family…

What We Did in Summer

Aniah and The Swimming Pool

My memory of my youth is a haze of fine particulate.I don’t remember what I did in the summer as a kid. Not specifically. I remember that I played outside with the neighbor kids and my siblings. We rode bikes and ran around. I went on vacation with my family. There was the library and…

Our Memories Become Theirs

At the beginning of my parenting experience, I said “no” often. The noise and the mess was a lot to handle. Not to mention the plain issue of just keeping track of where all the little live bodies were in space and time. And what they were planning to put in their mouth at that…