Pavement Dream
The cashier in the grocery store knows your secrets. So does the young man who bags your fruit, fish, shampoo, Together in one thin plastic bag Groaning towards the floor as you leave, hastily. If you deserved better you’d have spoken, you say to yourself. Two bags please, or even three Fish is a loner, […]
Write her
THE WHY NOT THEN When my daughter (alias Bink) was younger, sometimes friends or family would say,” Why don’t you write about her?” I was dismissive, back then. So many other people had done that—written articles, poems, a book about their child with autism– and done it well. I just didn’t think I’d have anything […]
Between Faith and The Cable News
As far as I can tell, we still revolve, this planet with people sticking out all over it, around the sun. Seems we still burn, and tan, and crops still turn towards something in the sky that glows warm. Tell me if you know otherwise. No, don’t tell me. In a year that feels surreal, […]
Why Yoga Matters Off the Mat
As I prepare to return to teaching classes next month, I’ve been musing and mulling over new ways to translate the essence of the great big practice that is Yoga. My desire, when I teach, is to reach underneath what you presume Yoga is, or isn’t, and touch your curiosity about your true nature. You […]
AUTISMS
Challenge, sadness, worry, fatigue….I can write just as many pages about how those words relate to mothering a child with disabilities as any other “special needs parent”. I surely can. But here’s the truth: there are so many things I’ve come to like, or outright love, about this journey. I’m not diminishing the fear for […]
The Garden of You
Imagine if you will, dear one, dear one and all, that you are sent to manifest something unique and quite vital to the world. You arrive as rich seeded earth, landing in just the right geographic location to support your eventual yield. The trees and the flowers and the shrubs in this area respond perfectly […]
Not Writing
Doing anything to avoid writing is the hardest work, working these twin dwellings; body and house. Each provides chores; endless spin cycles of exercise, rest, toil, despair. I even find myself talking to my father, asking him aloud what it was like to die, and does he watch me not writing, think me lazy as […]
On growing and knowing
The older I get the less I know. I woke with these words in my mouth, and they taste both new and true. My birthday has arrived and this one is significant somehow in a way no others have been. Fifty five, as in 55! The exclamation point is genuine, because I am rather mystified […]
Still life with Orioles
One of the things that goes along with having a special needs child is the kind of connections you make. I know many families with one or even two children who have a variety of disabilities, different abilities. The challenges can be immense. When I consider the qualities of inner strength and deep compassion, many […]
MEDITATION
The Sit When I am asked how to meditate There are no words the color of presence No shapes that look like attention I can only tell you what my senses tell me Or how I dread and then savor it And how little I attend to such reaction Most of all I love the […]