"Put your face in the water. Blow bubbles. See? Like me!" I immerse the lower half of my face and push air through my nostrils. I raise my face from the pool in an expression of excitement. My son copies me once, then refuses to repeat the action. He needs to learn to swim. Sure, it’ll take years before he’s close to mastery, but the process…
What would you do over, if you could? My husband and I were recently talking about things we truly wished we could do over again. He’d wished he’d attended high school prom with the girl who’d asked him. I wished I’d actually dated a particular boy in my senior year of high school, despite my parents’ objections—because, looking back, I’m pretty sure he was my first…
A beautiful Japanese maple preens its Autumn plumage in my parents' front garden. A larger version of this tree, but with bright green leaves, had filled the broad multi-paned window of the Shoreline house where my parents first brought me home as a baby. And, to continue tradition, in the small triangle of soil that borders the edge of my townhome's communal courtyard grows a little Japanese maple…
“I can only tell you what my journey has been. Yours will be different,” my mentor friend, Brian, tells me as I grip my coffee cup across the table from him. We’re meeting because I wanted advice. Wisdom. The next steps. I wanted to sit at the feet of a sage and become excited about the next climb ahead of me. The reality? There’s a lot…
One of my son's favorite places to visit is the cemetery. We walk there from our house (it's our nearest "park") and, once past the enclosure fence, my son crawls down from his stroller and pushes the stroller around like a life-size toy car. There's a fountain under a huge old fir that we call my son's fountain. Flat headstones make level ground which is…
It's purely maddening and bewildering to discover this: The longer I work on something, the more I try to improve, the more I can't tell whether I'm actually getting better. I exercise and my muscles get sore and irritated and suddenly sitting up straight is a challenge. (Oh great! Now I'm going backwards!) I add a few more spices and a dash of salt to the sauce…
This year has truly, madly, deeply* been one of the craziest that I, my family, and my heart has ever seen. I've experienced more heartbreak this year than most of those that came before it and I've been knocked to my knees, in tears, by generosity and love in measures that have risen to meet the height of my pain. *Truly, Madly, Deeply by Savage…
I come from the place of ice blue mountains that enclose me like crowned walls. I dream of green forests that smell of possibility. I am the child who found warmth under a gold lamp as I huddled with musty books beneath a gray cloud blanket. I come from a house filled with singing, shouting. Laughter in one breath, tears in the next. …
“I was really intimidated by you.” A friend once told me this. Actually, a lot of people have said it. I guess I make a killer first impression that says: “I’ve figured out how to do life. I’ve got my act together. I’m beautiful and powerful and intelligent.” Heh. On my good days, maybe. Let’s not forget that I also studied acting in college (full confession…
I learned today that the author under whom I studied last summer did not offer the same high-intensity workshop this year. A squeeze tightened in my chest as the thought ran through me: Did I attend the last session he will offer? I don't know the answer to this question, but it started me down a path of gratitude. I've sometimes wondered in the time since attending…