And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere there must be more of it. C.S. Lewis, Til We Have Faces Before our son’s wedding in July, I had never been to the Pacific Northwest, never seen British Columbia, never been in Seattle. Well, okay, I had been in the Seattle airport. […]
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The text had two questions, the first from the daughter, who is ten: “Are you related to Robert Louis Stevenson?” And the second from the mother, who is old enough to be a mother: “(The Daughter) is reciting her most favorite tomorrow… ‘The Swing.’ I’ve been coaching her to try to recite it without the […]
Read moreToday I hoped to accomplish a small handful of things which included, but was not limited to all the laundry walking the dog making soup for dinner writing a blog post I think anyone would agree this is a very small handful of things. It is not even a real handful, I think– which also […]
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I drove the girls to school on Thursday, a late-summer, light-filled morning. It was just the third week of school, day thirteen if we’re keeping count, which might not be a good idea. The conversation en route was cheerful. Chatter about driver’s ed, gladness that it was already Thursday, and the painted parking […]
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“I only have six more months to be a kid,” he said. Out of the blue, just standing there in the living room. What was I doing? Passing through, I suppose, on my way to the next busy-ness, the way it usually goes with me. But I was arrested by the question, and then made a […]
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Lately I dream in babies. Almost always they are my own, earlier incarnations of these same beings who, even now–at eighteen, and sixteen, and fourteen–do much to order my day. A week ago it was Emma, suddenly arriving while I visited with a friend who was in the midst of moving house. Boxes and displaced […]
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Naming a child is a pretty big deal. Anyone who has ever done it will say so. Because while a person can change her name legally (someday) if she wants to, I think the process is a genuine and maybe expensive hassle. Meanwhile, she’ll have to live with the name long enough to decide she […]
Read more“I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.” -Jeremiah 9:24 The Bible tells me that God is kind. This, of course, among a multitude of other qualities that He doesn’t so much possess as He defines by virtue of His existence. (And that is enough to […]
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We are gearing up for a big transition at our house: In less than forty-eight hours, Will will be on his way to Madagascar, and we will be navigating life as a family of five– minus one.This means that there’s lots to do these days, and there’s lots to think about. Around the errands and […]
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The plush frog was a gift sometime during the first year. With a music box embedded in its belly, a fabric-covered pull-string attached to its back, and a loop tied at the top of its head, the frog was the perfect toy to hang in the corner of the crib. I don’t remember how old […]
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