The photographer asked if I had had a chance yet to look at the pictures she had sent. I didn’t know that they had come. I sat holding my breath as I opened the gallery on my phone, but at 10 minutes in, the dam was in danger of rupturing. My whole...
It starts from the time they are born: A self-imposed, invisible stop-watch, pushing you to jump from phase to phase with barely a breath. When they are newborns, you want them to balance their heads, roll over, and sit up. Before they even crawl...
Palm Sunday: The start of Holy Week in Christian circles. We went out through the redwood forest to the same church we were married in to hear my mom sing songs with the choir that I had heard since my head only reached her waistband. The building...
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. 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...