eagles of one nest

The fridge at Mom’s is full of twenty years of photos. New years eves, babies, picture of me on stoops of houses long gone, braces and baby toes, nieces and nephews and everyone in between. I pawed at a butterfly, the symbol I share with mom for all of those we love who have gone on to other worlds.

“She’s there, you know,” Mom said, and whispers, “Little T.”

climbin’ fences

She wants to climb the fences. First, it was the skate park. Could she do it? The throws of adrenaline that she must have felt climbing higher and higher, as i pretended not to look on, my heart pounding, the half pipes and rails seeming miles beneath her.

deeper into the words

am tuning in to the rhythm of my own creative process. I am learning character from Hemingway and style from Didion, delving into wildness with cheryl strayed and sitting peacefully on the fences of British churchyards with Bill Bryson. I am asking myself the traveller’s questions of Pico Iyer and am suddenly indebted to Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty for their courage and bravery to get up every morning and write.

[insert deity here]

When I returned home from walking the dog last night, the dusk had turned to dark.

five years of gratitude

BUT THE THINGS THAT REALLY HELPED ME THROUGH THE GRIEF WEREN’T THINGS. THEY WERE PEOPLE.

Your Year in Unfinished Blogs

I prance around my kitchen, dancing to my loud, wild drum beats. The six year old is at the neighbor’s and the husband’s out for a drink. I inhale deeply, breathing it in. Life.

in pursuit of magic

Two months, when my folks invited us down to Florida for Christmas, Mitchy and I thought – LET’S DO IT. Let’s do DISNEY.

the deep breath of parenthood

We are proud of her in countless ways: for her thoughtfulness and her gratitude; her organized creativity, her musical intelligence and her determination steering the way.

For the woman that we know she will become.

child of the digital

The computer art is back. Perplexing. Leila is five and she draws pictures of keyboards. It’s terrifying. She comes home with fences and princesses, houses and suns too. But it’s this darker, more complex artistic passages that concern me. Space bars. Keyboards. They may seem arbitrary but they must mean something to her. I know […]

For T, who would be three

Last month, Leila drew her baby sister Tya on this post-it note, and told me to stick it up above the counter. “Then she can always be with us, mum.” March 12th you would be three years old, if you had stayed with us. You’re in a lot of our family art, Ty. Sometimes you’re […]