Night Slips Gently

The day’s events parade across the streets of my mind as sun slips behind trees; the day is coming to an end. On a ticket in the kitchen of the restaurant where I sit is my order for glazed salmon. I am wrapping up a day that has been spent mostly alone, away from home. I’m midway through my return home now, watching out the restaurant window as the curtain falls on a day I have fully savored. Continue reading “Night Slips Gently”

Lessons on an Airplane

I spent much of last weekend in airport terminals and on planes, traveling to and from Los Angeles. One of my travel buddies talked to the gate agent about changing our seats. The transaction went well, and my friend thanked her for being so helpful. “We try,” the gate agent answered. “We really do always try to make our customers happy. And when they’re cooperative and friendly about it, it makes a difference.” Continue reading “Lessons on an Airplane”

Motherhood: The Gift You Unwrap

Mother’s Day No. 13 is now part of my calendar archives. As I reflect on the gifts I was given by my children this year, I can’t help but make the association between the literal and the proverbial gifts we moms receive every day. Children are a blessing, and motherhood is hard. Terrifying and delightful at once, it is a gift you unwrap daily without knowing what you’ll get. My kids now span the ages of 5 to 13, and every day I face a gamut of emotions from relaxed and confident to humble and downright scared. As my kids grow older, I am increasingly aware of the fact that the “easy stuff” is behind us. Continue reading “Motherhood: The Gift You Unwrap”

Between the Inhale and Exhale

The silence around me is precious, and I feel as though I’ve stolen it. Writing is a chore when I am distant from the rhythm of my own breathing, when the motions of my day are frenetic and I fail to notice I’m breathing or that breathing is gift or that I am just a breath.  Drawing near means slowing down. Urgent nips  heels like a dog at sheep. Slowing is chore when I make my home in task, when breath is taken in gasps and sighs. Yet without breath, life ebbs. Continue reading “Between the Inhale and Exhale”

Thanksgiving

My first grader proudly handed me this card after school yesterday:

Thanksgiving Card

Happy thanksgiving! I am thankful for
my mom she maks diner.
I am thankful for my hous becus
it ceeps us safe. I am thaynkfull for
my sisters becus thay like too play with me.
I am thankfull for my dog
she is vereree sweet.
I am thankfull for my Dad Beecus
he maks munee for are famlee at werc.

I too am thankful for my son and also for my husband, dawturs, frends, hous and werc! For any and all of these things, we are vereee blessed. Happy Thanksgiving, frends.

Car Line Rules

Car line at my kids’ elementary school is like a slowly moving convoy of parked cars. It stalls and creeps forward on a two-lane road that widens only for a single, left turn lane. That lone turn lane happens to be where the crossing guard works his magic of shuttling distracted children safely across the street and intermittently blocking the progression of traffic. If you venture car line, which means you retrieve your child from school by car, you are both willing to exercise patience (as it takes on average 20 minutes to get through) and willing to be a part of a massive traffic blockade. Through-traffic that unwittingly chooses this wrong road at this wrong time of day gets stuck behind you. It has no clue that yours is an idle lane terminating in a slow parade of semi-parked cars swallowing up students whose age, backpacks and lunch sacks make them extremely inefficient at loading. For the through-traffic, it takes some time to figure out what’s happening, and by the time a motorist does, his only option is to use that single left turn lane as escape. No sooner has he committed to his escape route than the sentinel of the street, that safety-vested crossing guard, waves his resolute, red stop sign and blocks the car’s path to initiate yet another slow crossing of encumbered students, parents and gear. Every day I see the pattern repeat. Continue reading “Car Line Rules”

Uprooting Winter

Rain foiled my intentions today to uproot winter from the yard. I’ve been avoiding the sad, forsaken planters and flower beds, once beautiful adornments now turned brown and brittle from the one-two punch of winter’s cold and my neglect. With the coming of warmer weather this past week, the kids have reclaimed the back yard, and dozens of red plastic cups litter the scene with secret botany experiments, “soups” I was told. Here and there between cups, the 4 and 5-year-old children proudly marked thirty-some of the dog’s land mines with bricks leftover from an addition project, an idea they thought quite imaginative. It’s as though, instead of spring, we are sprouting bricks. A collapsing, old Cozy Coupe is parked in front of the screened door, and “Nella” the scooter is parked haphazardly close so that you can’t open the door more than a few inches without hitting it. A bucket sits on the step with yet another soup that will spill its guts just as soon as someone decides to open the door and exit. Along the back fence, someone ran the Green Gator into the Cast Irons where it has idly collected leaves and pollen and more soups. I wonder how many mosquito larvae may be mixed in with this one, patiently waiting for the first day warm enough to hatch? Continue reading “Uprooting Winter”

A Cry in the Dark

The birth of God as Son of Man happened in the dark night. A young girl, bulging with the promised Savior, was forced to leave home on a lengthy journey that would bump her along dirty roads at the behest of a donkey and a king’s command to be counted. She was near the time of giving birth. As a woman who has birthed four children in sanitary hospital rooms, who was discouraged from travel during the final month of pregnancy, I can barely imagine Mary making her way to Bethlehem in such primitive conveyance. Yet she did, with the promise that she bore God himself.

Continue reading “A Cry in the Dark”

The Parenting Crucible

My children were born on four different days, each in a different year, each in a different delivery room and each in a different way. If the labor of giving birth were any indication of my children’s personalities, my two most challenging to rear were also my two most challenging to birth. For all the pain the births brought, parenting has brought more. In the midst of the joys and pride of rearing four children is the crucible of parenting. Continue reading “The Parenting Crucible”