Today was grey and overcast. Rain was softly spitting. I carried my granddaughter, Mavis, outside for a minute as we ran between her house and mine, and the moments in it had us both giggling, and her squinting with her entire face. Â Once inside...
At the front of our house, right under the main window, years ago we planted an Aeonium succulent that has grown well, and has become quite tall. It became clear over the years by the way that it grew and spread that where we had planted it was the...
My most dramatic child, my baby, just had surgery to remove her wisdom teeth this week. We all knew it was about to be a whole thing. We talked about it in low tones, and looked to be sure she wasn’t listening before we whispered about it in the...
There were multiple new girls that showed up to try out at soccer practice yesterday. Even if I hadn’t known they were the new ones, I could have recognized them by the way they stood on the sidelines with their big eyes, fiddling with their shirt...
She climbed in the car after school looking like she often does: Tired, victorious, brave. Middle school can take it out of you. She seemed a little quiet at first, and I wondered if she had eaten all of her lunch like I had instructed her to do, or...
Everyone warned me what it would be like to become a grandma. “You will have never loved a person more.” “She will just bat her eyes and you will give her whatever she wants.” “There is nothing you will not do for her.” I knew this was most...
The other day I got mad. BIG mad. The kind that had me calling two kids to the couch for a bit of an “awakening;” The kind they’ll probably tell stories about to their own kids.  I’d already been frustrated all morning after taking in too much...
When the Super Bowl comes, I’m usually just there for the snacks and the commercials. I don’t really care much about the game. It’s always the same old not understanding how three minutes can feel THAT long, the same old three hour long scowl on my...
It’s been a lonely feeling week. Actually, decade, really. I find myself wanting to bang my head about the complexity of things: The rips in the country, the pain of so many people, the fires and blizzards and hurricanes, all the while I’m still...
Everything has made me cry today; Things I’ve read, things I’ve thought, the general state of the world.  My youngest daughter, Paige, is now sick with whatever I’ve had for days, and she is, possibly, the world’s hardest to handle sick patient. ...