mother

  • Window

    Window

    There is a large interior window in a dance studio where I teach early childhood music. On one side of the window is the seating area for waiting families and on the other, my teaching space. As I was prepping for class this morning on my side of the glass, my students came in with…

  • Provision

    Provision

    I pray, like, a lot. Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing or my anxious nature, but basically I am literally living out that impossible sounding admonition from scripture to “pray continually.” (1Thessalonians 5:17) When I wake up, I get on my knees just for a second or two to give the day to God. I do…

  • Alma Mater

    There was a college student observing in one of my preschool music classrooms today, and as I watched her, dark-haired and nervous, I saw myself so many years before. I was once a freshman education major, sent into classrooms to see if it was an environment in which I wanted to work for the rest-of-my-life,…

  • Climb

    Climb

    I meet with God in savasana, the quiet, still time at the end of a yoga class. We have kind of a routine, God and I. As the teacher covers most of the students with blankets, I instead put on my cozy wrap cardigan, lay down in what’s known as ‘corpse pose’, and meet God…

  • Tread

    In yoga, savasana brought me to the awareness of my deep-water faith experience yet again. In His kindness, Jesus threw me a little floatie out there because He could see I was not resting or walking or floating. I was flailing. While I caught my breath there in the obviously-made-for-a-child floatie, He let me have…

  • Clock

    Clock

    As the school year winds down and the graduation ceremonies and parties gear up, you hear the same parental refrain: Make Time Stop. And I get it, I felt similar emotions when my oldest was graduating from high school. Then, I was gathering up moments from babyhood through elementary school and beyond and holding them…

  • Pass

    Pass

    My youngest child has just a handful of days left of high school, and I’m finding my reaction to her big milestone quite different from when we walked this road with our son just two years ago. Then, I was in mourning, pulling in every “last” and wringing my hands over how everything was about…

  • Savasana

    I woke up from a bone-chilling nightmare and got ready for a morning yoga class. Still shaking from the all too real dream, it was impossible to leave all of my thoughts outside the room, as our instructor had suggested. I carried that thing with me through warm-ups, sun salutations, warrior poses, triangles, and spinal…

  • Carried

    It had been four days of flu as I went to sleep last night, the night before the secondary pneumonia and sinus infections were diagnosed. I fell exhausted into bed, slightly lighter than I have been due to almost a week’s worth of suppressed appetite. My head hit the pillow and as I breathed shallowly,…

  • First

    First

    We were waiting for a table at Bickford’s, a very rare post-mass breakfast out with the family. I was probably only six or seven years old, but I vividly remember the smell of pancakes, my sisters and I huddled in the restaurant entryway in our winter coats. There was much more than syrup on my…