Brown Girl Hair Has Left the Building
Bink loves girl hair. For the uninitiated, this translates to long straight hair hanging down, on a female of any age. Preferably, the hair should be visible equally on the right and left sides of her head. I’ve had long brown hair for 25 of my daughter’s 27 years. At one point, it grazed the […]
My Daughter, the Foodie
Bink loves food. In fact, her relationship with it goes far beyond what tastes good and satisfies her hunger. She loves looking at cookbooks, finding recipes on the computer, and watching cooking shows. The painting subject she selects for her weekly art class is often something edible. The paintings on our walls at home, and […]
WALKING
At twelve, thirteen, fourteen months, when most children begin to walk, or make a show of pulling their soft wobbly bodies to stand, you were content to sit and rub the carpet, watch the fibers grow fuzz beneath hands you didn’t seem to know belonged to you. A plump child you were, with flesh-ringed legs […]
Kind or Write?
I’ve been finding it challenging to encapsulate life with my daughter, Bink, lately. Hard to shape words for the page and even for casual conversation with friends, many of whom have their own experiences with parenting and/or caring for people they love who have special needs. It’s not for lack of material. Bink continues to […]
Pentimento
pentimento noun pen·ti·men·to | \ ˌpen-tə-ˈmen-(ˌ)tō Definition of pentimento A reappearance in a painting of an original drawn or painted element which was eventually painted over by the artist The canvas: my face in the mirror, fifty eight years familiar with this world. Five or six, roaming like the free-range child I was, I caught […]
Our small eyes
Perchance Perhaps nothing begins or ends, not exactly. The field mouse knows the tall grass to be her world. We say morning comes, and yet it is always somewhere, just not in the very front of our small eyes. The trees are wise. They know everything cycles, seed to sapling, strong trunk reaches skyward,, and […]
Daisy Bell
I’m showing my age, and proudly, when I ask this—do you remember the sweet old song called Daisy Bell? “Daisy, Daisy, tell me your answer, do/ I’m half crazy all for the love of you…” Those lyrics and that tune lodged itself in my memory when I was nine or ten years old. I can clearly visualize […]
In praise of song
SONG STORIES You open your mouth and out pours a river carrying the rhythms of fluids— blood and lymph, tears, synovial. It is current, and source, keeper of memories and the stories of your ancestors, and mine. Song is the lilting thing passed down from breast to infant […]
Arrivals
I’m posting this a day before my daughter’s 26th birthday. I’ve always felt, with certainty, that we were meant to incarnate this way, as mother and daughter, at this particular time in the life of this planet. I don’t need to know why, because I know it’s true. Happy birthday, Bink. You are the best […]
The Meaning of Compassion
The Kuan Yin She keeps watch in the warm corner of my bedroom, her bearing almost more regal for the rivers of cracks and generous chips that mark her faded turquoise. Her right hand, the deliverer of action, folds into Gyan Mudra, the gesture of consciousness. Preparing to take her picture, I haul myself into […]