The ears wake first, opening to the songs of birds: titmouse, cardinal, the jay’s cry. They are close to the house and they are in the woods; they are streets and blocks and arm’s reach away. In the cedar, in the dogwood, the beech. It’s time to feed, maybe time to nest. Morning is the birds’ world first. Then the […]
Read moreMy children went back to school yesterday. First day of school in the new year, but they are still wrapping up the first semester. The trees are bare still; the lawn still only two-thirds raked from the fall of leaves and pine needles. The kitchen window still wants washing, and only yesterday I scrubbed last year’s […]
Read moreI was cleaning yesterday. This is not something I am given to doing often. It’s dangerous, don’t you know? With all the writing there is to be done, cleaning tempts me with its mindlessness and its (ohsobrief) sense of accomplishment. During the week when the kids are in school, I avoid it as absolutely best […]
Read moreDecember is the month of our greatest anticipation, followed at a distance– in this country, anyway–by May, when children are waiting for school to liberate them for the summer. But December is a month of anticipation around the world, the season in the Christian church for expectation. We re-live in worship and celebration the Most […]
Read more“Do not hurry; do not rest.” — Goethe Here’s news– or is it?: I did not make my Thanksgiving deadline. There are lots of reasons for this, one of them being that, while Thanksgiving is on a Thursday, preparations and their busy-ness for it begin Well In Advance of that, which meant that I was doing nothing […]
Read moreI’m mailing it in today. Despite the list of blog posts waiting in my little notebook, I am only making time to do this. There is simply Too Much Else to do. My children have the day off today. Which means, of course, that one of them has a friend over, and another is at […]
Read moreAlready it was five years ago– the most pressured-filled fall of my life. I was teaching full-time: humanities 9 and humanities 10, both of them curricula I had written. It was year 2 for the ninth grade, but only the first year for the tenth, which meant (as it always does, I think, when teaching […]
Read moreI went to my 25th high school reunion on Saturday. Of the handful of reunions our class has held over the years, it was the first I’ve managed to attend. We all know how it goes: in the fullness that becomes our every-day lives, escape to something like this might be unattainable indulgence, especially if– […]
Read moreIt was a whirlwind. It was a weekend that started on a Wednesday. It was my birthday, and the 24th anniversary of our 1st date, and a visit from my parents. It was meals at favorite restaurants, and being sung the Happy Birthday song, and a new coat. It was homemade potato chips with gorgonzola […]
Read moreHere’s to imagination, and the world of fiction that can be so good at inspiring it. Here’s to the first novel ever read to me– before the Little House books, before Lewis’ Narnia. Here’s to a book about rejects all in polite society: a pig, a rat, a spider. Here’s to an unflinching look at […]
Read more