My Daughter the Cat
I am going to tell you for moment about my ten-year-old daughter, my middle child – because I am deeply in love with her, and I am fairly sure that she keeps the world spinning. She has a tan, small face and tiny features like a mouse or a squirrel. There is a smattering of freckles across her nose like someone has been flinging wild oats out to the horses. Like her mama, she needs her quiet time. If she gets overwhelmed, she might really let you have it, yelling and screaming at one moment, then taking a moment alone to recollect herself and then reemerging moments later like some kind of beautiful, kind, sweet thing. A thing transformed. “Oh, hello. I love you,” she will say when she comes back to herself, even if she never left but has been...
Read MoreThe Greatest of Fruits
My son, who would prefer to eat nothing but chicken nuggets and chocolate pudding, decides that his new favorite food is grapefruit, and since this one of the healthiest things he’s put in his mouth – ever – I went straight out and bought a five pound bag of ruby reds. So we’re sitting at the table mowing down this bag of grapefruit and my kids are extolling its virtues. They squeeze the fruit into their bowls and then slurp it up. My husband says, “It’s great fruit, isn’t it?” “Yes, it’s really fantastic,” I say. My son says, “I love it, but the name is weird. I mean, it’s nothing like a grape. And a grape is already a fruit.” “It’s one of life’s great mysteries,” I say. “Wait a...
Read MoreWinter’s Charm
Photo courtesy of Muffet, on Flickr A few of my favorite wintry things: The swoosh of my cross country skis as they sail along on heaps of powder; the towering Engelman spruce with their lofty snowy hats and puffy snowy sleeves that bestow water for my kids, who occasionally drag their tongues along them as we ski by; my terrier, Harriet, in her prissy pink sweater, tearing ferociously after ground squirrels and chipmunks. Lest you think it’s all about skiing, it’s also the way my foot slides into a boot that fits just so; it’s friends with woodstoves and crackling logs; it’s the crunch and squeak of snow under my new, miraculous Finnish snowtires. It’s bustling, cheery, hollering holiday crowds; it’s avoiding bustling, cheery,...
Read MorePrivate Gratitudes
Photo courtesy of Mel B., on Flickr We have a Thanksgiving tradition in my family that I’m not so very thankful for. It’s called the Gratitude Circle, and I’m not grateful for it because it is this tradition that makes it so my parents and brother don’t share Thanskgiving Dinner with me and my husband and my kids and my in-laws’ bold band of merrymakers. No, they would rather dine alone than share intimate thoughts with a crowd of people they see only once a year. As you might imagine, in the Gratitude Circle, we gather just before dinner and we all hold hands – all 34 of us – and we go around the circle, taking turns making little speeches about what we’re thankful for. This can take 30 or so minutes, and as you also might imagine, in...
Read MoreThe Twisty Bits of a Good Party
Photo courtesy of Foxtongue on Flickr Here’s a true confession of motherhood: Birthday parties freak me out. Not the kind with just my kid and some of his friends, but the ones where I have to host a whole bunch of my relatives and mommy friends, many of whom don’t get along for some reason. I try to avoid throwing these big birthday parties at all costs because, in addition to costing a fortune, they inevitably take my attention away from the birthday boy or girl. I’m so busy filling odd, arbitrary social obligations that I miss my own kid blowing out the birthday candles. Still, every now and then, the planets are aligned just so and my husband gets a wild hair and invites everyone under the sun. Saturday was one of those days. Aunts, uncles, cousins,...
Read MoreMy wish for you today
0216 by Cia de Foto, on Flickr “Oh, I love I love I love! I cried inside myself. So many people, so many things! Music and stars and snow and weather! Oh, if one could always feel this warm love, this excitement, this glory of the infinite possibilities of life!” — Madeleine L’Engle from Camilla Do you ever feel like this? Do you ever have so much energy and enthusiasm about the possibilities of life that you feel as though you just can’t hold it all in? Sometimes I think my kids must feel that way when they come in from outside and they are laughing and tripping and spinning around in circles and won’t sit down. Their giggles just rip out of them, sometimes rapid-fire in staccato bursts, or tumbling in fluid and hearty and goofy...
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