daughter

  • Light

    I went walking, quiet and alone, skirt swishing, looking for light or a piece of sky to capture with a camera. At every turn, I found telephone wires, broken buildings, and overgrown trees and they blocked my view. I could just make out the outline of the sunset, or the unearthly glow that came pouring…

  • Garden

    What was your favorite book when you were a little kid? It seems to me that the books that speak to us in childhood are treasures, keys that unlock something in our lives we need for the day and from which we can draw later. Last night, I was walking through a bookstore and found…

  • Eulogy

    “You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story… “ Hamilton Yesterday, I embarrassed my daughter in the checkout line of the grocery store in which she works, and I left there thinking surely, here is yet another story to tell at my funeral. This is not a rare occurrence. Through the…

  • Lost

      My daughter and I had a delightful breakfast on the water followed by a perfect walk followed by the shock of the realization that somewhere along the way, I had lost my keys. Our sunny, grateful moods turned quickly, hers to panic and mine to gritty determination to find what was lost. We retraced…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Breathe

    I have a love-hate relationship with my phone. When my daughter was called into the dentist this morning , I did what 98% of us probably do when we’re waiting, or find ourselves with a stretch of free time…I picked up my phone and started scrolling through text messages, emails, facebook, and I was immediately…

  • More grocery store wisdom

    “I really like your hair,” said Beth, the woman working the grocery checkout, and I did not know what to say. All Summer long (truthfully, all life long), my hair has been my nemesis.  I’ve bought products, scoured hair-care websites using the search terms ‘frizz’, ‘curly’ and ‘help’.  I’ve ‘plomped’, deep-conditioned, dried with a t-shirt,…

  • Dr. Who Chicken and the Good Tomatoes

    Last Summer, we spent much of the precious daughter-home-from-camp-weekend time binge watching multiple seasons of Dr. Who.   At the same time, we discovered how delicious chicken thighs were when cooked on the grill, and we grilled many, many pounds of them with piles of red peppers, zucchini, Vidalia onion, and eggplant. These were perfect dinners,…

  • Alternate Reality

    Last night at dinner, my son asked if we had ever considered the possibility that each of us was the only person who had ever existed and that everyone and everything else in history was a figment of our imagination. My daughter replied that she hadn’t had that particular thought, but had pondered whether we…