A Little Flower
“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince Hello, First, here’s a sweet daffodil that blossomed outside my door yesterday. A little yellow beacon of hope. It’s been quiet here on […]
Integration
It has been almost a month since my mother passed. It wasn’t unexpected. She was old and ill and tired. She wanted to go, was impatient with the way those final months seemed to drag and throw more miseries her way. I was able to mark 60 of my birthdays with her still in the […]
WALKING HER HOME
Adrift. That’s the word that floated into my teary vision as I sat in my car outside the facility my mother has resided in for the past seven years. These after-visit pauses have become part of my ritual in the past few months. There is always someplace else I need to be, fitting in my […]
Conversations with a Ghost
A Dead Friend Speaks Almost a year into my exit from flesh, what we call, when embodied, death, You talk to me, wonder if I help when you struggle and worry, soothe when you rage and grieve. You ask if I’ve retained shape and color, if my long and wild hair, blonde with streaks of […]
Little Altars Everywhere
My home is host to little altars everywhere honoring lives lived, seasons arriving and leaving, the hundred sparks of grace and wonder, sorrow and understanding that pock and foliate hours and years squeezed into the dance of this body, my particular, grand, unbearably blessed and gratefully transient human experience. On good days I go bowing […]
LATELY
The ground seems foreign, new roots and stones anchored in the middle of familiar paths, and my feet stumble more, much more. Are you stumbling too? Such heavy air, a downward press on the shoulders makes it hard to look up, check out the sky. I can’t speak for you, but I feel your heart […]
Dragonflies
As I write this, my dear friend Marina lies dying in a lovely room inside the oldest house in an historic and pretty New Hampshire town. A wonderful woman who worked with her in the local general store has taken her into her home. Hospice has set her up well with a hospital bed that […]
Time, Place, Classroom
WHEN The world gets so noisy. Too many voices straining, pushing past their natural limits to be heard. Our small ears can’t discern provenance or factuality. Reactions quicken, turning knee-jerk, protective. WHERE There is the place where trees thicken into extended families, root systems entwined beneath the earth. Look for the leafy canopy that forms […]
Collateral Sorrow
It’s been a time of times, a steady landslide of uncertainties. Yes, the Covid, the shutdown. Yes, Bink and so many other adults with disabilities being home all day every day for many weeks, with all the usual programs and activities canceled. Yes, the mass suffering and loss that has accompanied this pandemic around the […]
When all this is over…
WHEN THIS IS OVER Bring bread, chewy and warm, wrapped in that red checkered tablecloth that always sings picnic, which is short for happy family, easy friendships, peace and plenty in our town state country planet. We never went on one, a picnic, not once in all our together years even though we had that […]