family

  • Celebration Song (Red, part two)

    My mother had a print of a painting in her house and I said I liked it, so of course she bought me one. It’s called ‘Celebration Song’, by Tim Steward, and it seems to depict in streaks of earth tones a Heavenly scene of thirteen spirits rejoicing together. It’s a bit abstract, but to…

  • Look

    When my mother was very sick with ovarian cancer, and maybe wondering about her legacy or her impact or what our lives would be like without her, I told her about the rooms in my house. I told my Mom that if I stood in the center of any one of those rooms and turned…

  • Word

    Did you ever hear something come out of someone’s mouth that rang so true that it slowed time, just a little? It could be truth, or wisdom, or encouragement, but when it hits you, you know it’s something you needed like a missing puzzle piece in the very depths of you and the only response…

  • Becoming

    One day when my kids were very small, I was talking to my mother about a new habit of mine. Even though I took several daily walks with the kids during those busy years, I had begun getting up really early and walking by myself before my husband left for work. I used the time…

  • 914 (part two)

      There are six or eight little white utility vans that zip around the university campus where I live, and I often see them while running, walking the dog or sitting on my porch. The vans are identical except for the drivers, whom I never notice, and their three digit license plate numbers, which I…

  • KIP (for Bridgewater)

    When my son was in Kindergarten in 2003, I first heard the rumblings that things were not as they should be at the Mitchell School. There were mold problems. An air conditioning system and rugs had been torn out and abandoned. In a school designed to run on that air-flow system, windows cracked open just…

  • Loss

    missing your mother a few years in is like walking around the edge of a large pit in the ground the more you look at it how deep and dark and unending the more likely you will fall in you remember what it was like down there the raw ceaseless howling and you have no wish…

  • Teacher

    In my Facebook feed, there was a prompt to see if you could remember all of your teachers from kindergarten through grade six, in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. I sat at the kitchen table and struggled to bring forth a couple of names and faces, while others came easily with a wave of memories.…

  • Around

    Today I taught music in the preschool my children attended, and that completes a circle for me. Over the years, in my role as an early childhood music educator, I have led programs in most of the places where my kids had their first playgroups, their library story-times, their kindergarten classrooms. All of the places…

  • With, and a Little Ahead

    My dog, Bailey, walks with me and a little ahead. She can often smell or sense things I cannot, so in those moments, she’ll take the lead, but otherwise she stays with me, side by side. With me and a little ahead. It brings back a memory of when I was twenty, invited on retreat…