family

  • Damaged

    I shared the grocery aisles with a mother and her four small daughters and it was not going well. The two littlest ones were wiggly on the cart-bench, grabbing and opening food packages from the carriage. The five-year old periodically wandered away, attracted by brightly colored boxes and tasty snacks. The nine-year old did the…

  • Give

    My mother loved to give gifts. She loved hunting for and concocting just the right present, and she loved nothing more than watching me and my sisters open something great on Christmas morning.   As we got older, she would pick up on some small thing we might say during the year, and make it into…

  • Hero’s Journey

    This fall, my daughter took a half-year course called “A Hero’s Journey”, which delved into the theory of Joseph Campbell that all of our favorite stories resonate with us because they follow the same narrative pattern. A hero is separated from what she knows, is tested, receives help, battles and wins, and returns home, not…

  • Go

    Being a mother to children ages nineteen and almost seventeen can be a bewildering, conflicting business. They’re not children, for one. They are somewhere very close to adulthood, and it’s no longer my job to drive them places, or pack snacks or enforce some of the smaller rules I hoped would give structure to their…

  • Meal

    Over the span of my life, I have eaten a lot of delicious bites of food. The first bite of caramelized onion butter on warm sourdough at The Foundry, the sea salt dark chocolate caramel from Hilliards, the sharp, buttery taste of Kerrygold Dubliner cheddar. These are just a few. But it takes many more…

  • Me

    I came across a picture of me as a child that was reminiscent of a picture of me taken this Christmas. Our faces are turned at the same angle and our coloring and features are similar. I never grew out of that unruly hair. But there are differences, of course. Nine-year old me had some…

  • Daughters

    All of the mother-daughter pairs were at the craft store today, and then they all followed me over to the Paper Store. These girls and women stuck out to me all day long. They were a variety of ages…children to elderly, and some were sweet and others were annoyed. After all, this is the essence…

  • Dad

    When I doubt and worry and despair, I sometimes need to check myself regarding what I believe about the nature of God. If I feel abandoned, that must mean that God is careless. If I feel shaken, maybe I believe God is not powerful. If I feel lonely, maybe my image of God is not…

  • Four

    My mother is the only person who knew pretty much my whole story and loved me anyway. She fiercely loved me, thought I was wonderful, and said so. She saw my insecurities, failings, and anxieties and knew the root of most of them. She could hear something quake in my voice about four seconds into…

  • Yarn

    It seems to me that a life spent with young children is made of varying textures and materials. There are the structures that give shape to your daily life, like the school day and activities and sports. These provide the skeleton of a schedule and also tend to dictate your community. These structures are brick;…