The cat calls for her dinner. (This is a post about a poem, and these are some of its lines:) On the porch I bend and pour brown soy stars into her bowl, stroke her dark fur. No. It’s not a poem about a cat, although here at the beginning one might think it […]
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Dear Friends, I wanted to give you something for Christmas. Something free and different. Yes, yes. I know that everything on this website is free (okay, well, if you click the links to my books you’ll see that the books aren’t free). And the Advent readings are certainly free. But they aren’t different. Okay, […]
Read moreTime spent teaching is never lost. I spent an hour in a 9th grade classroom yesterday. The first time in nearly five years. This was at a public school, Durham School of the Arts downtown. The place where my daughter now spends her days, where my middle son used to spend his. And we’ve lived […]
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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 […]
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I feel as if I’ve done a lot of traveling lately. It’s that time of year, right? Summer vacation. We’re gone, we’re here, we’re gone again. Definitely not complaining. I love to travel. But lately it’s got me thinking about how I pack. Like most people (everyone?), I’m guessing I have the normal categories: clothes, […]
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We are in New England for the week, staying on a farm in a quiet corner of Rhode Island. It’s beautiful here–because it’s New England, because it’s green and wooded, because it’s about ten degrees cooler than any July at home. Of course we want New England to look as it *should,* and Rhode […]
Read more“‘Does anyone ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?’‘Saints and poets, maybe, they do some.’”—Thornton Wilder, Our Town Seamus Heaney died last Friday. He was only 74– a bit young, in my opinion, in this late age, to shuffle off this mortal coil. His death is our loss entirely. I don’t know […]
Read moreI attended our church’s women’s retreat this weekend. It was a beautiful time: so many women I know– and many others I don’t– gathered to enjoy one another, to learn more about our God, to rest from the pull of our daily lives. I remember going on youth group retreats when I was a teenager. […]
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 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 […]
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