Living Well

  • Hamilton

    I’ve read lots of accounts attempting to explain the reach and appeal of Hamilton, a Broadway show that has taken the world by storm. Some who have written about it are immigrants, or have close relatives who were, and they identify with Alexander Hamilton’s trials, determination, and hard fought success. Some are fathers, and they…

  • Communion

    As a music minister at a First Communion Mass, I have a front row seat for some real beauty and also some outright hilarity. I watch the facial expressions of the second-grade children as they receive the Eucharist for the first time, and it can be hard to keep my place in the music; they…

  • Tapestry

    “Not everything is a metaphor, Mom…not everything has to mean something,” my sixteen year old daughter says sometimes when I look too deeply at some small thing. And, I get it. Mothers can be annoying, and our quirky habits can be fodder for teasing and the very best eulogies. My ability to find a metaphor…

  • Hero

    My son begs me to stop telling the stories of when I did everything wrong. When I speak from the catalog of my most embarrassing moments, he becomes physically uncomfortable, desperate to climb into a time machine and rescue me from myself. But there are lessons to be learned in all of that muck, lessons…

  • Free

    One early morning in a 1970s summer, I woke before my sisters and went for a bike ride. Bike rides were a many-a-day occurrence in our seventies’ summers, but we tended to ride in packs, to someone’s house to play, then to the corner store to buy grape hubba bubba gum, then home again. On…

  • Beautiful

    Beautiful. Amazing. Impressive. These are words my yoga teacher routinely used during our practice today. Part of me wanted to believe she was talking about me, though I probably didn’t deserve it. Part of me thinks she uses these words routinely because she is an inherently encouraging person. Regardless, whenever she says something positive, I…

  • Bailey

    One year ago, we brought our dog home from a rescue shelter in New Hampshire. It was a long journey for her, from Arkansas to New Hampshire to here, and she had at least three different names along the way. It was a long journey for us as well. For many years, I was the…

  • Christmas, Death, Birth

    On November 4, 2012, my family celebrated one last Christmas with our Mom. She died the next day. The day that followed that was my forty-first birthday. On that birthday/funeral planning morning, as Facebook greetings poured in on top of condolences, one sweet friend wrote that she hoped I would one day find some meaning…

  • Love

    Valentine’s Day is a hard day for a lot of people. I have friends who are still searching for a partner, friends whose marriages are in trouble, friends who are divorcing or divorced, friends whose spouses are in Heaven. For them, this is a day in which they are bombarded with images of romantic love,…

  • Rules

    I went grocery shopping at the worst possible time. It was Saturday, and the day before the Super Bowl, and it was as crowded as you might imagine, but I thought I could get in and out with my short list. I was wrong. The aisles were crammed full of people and carts and the…