The smell of moist earth and lilacs hung in the air like wisps of the past and hints of the future. (Margaret Millar) Ahhhhhhh…the melodious scent of lilacs is practically enough to put me into a trance. I can’t really think of another more distinctly memorable essence with such direct links to my childhood.… Continue reading “Sweet Dreams, Lilac”
I mean no disrespect to those who also find these debates complicated, charged and even bewildering, but I wish that I could understand why so many people are threatened by the #BlackLivesMatter movement. And I’m not talking about the extremists, although they are out there, they are out everywhere, in every group; religion, politics,… Continue reading She Implored Me to Speak Up
Dear Mom, Today is your birthday. It’s always been such a special and important day for me, because you have always been so special and important to me. I’ve been thinking about this day all week. It’s not easy to know you’re not here to celebrate it, and to accept that I can’t call you or Skype with you. I can’t hear your voice outside my head...
Almost exactly three weeks after we lost my mother, my father and I were grabbing lunch one day, just the two of us. We'd decided to eat at a lovely little cafe not too far from where we'd been staying every night for these past few weeks; my grandmother's house, overlooking the beach and the… Continue reading The Lunch
When my son was a child, we said some variation of this to each other every day and every night, "I love you a hundred, million worlds." I'm not exactly sure of the origins of our saying it, but I know that my heart had never before felt the way that it did about him,… Continue reading A Hundred, Million Worlds
It’s such a powerful idea when you consider it carefully: Comparison is the thief of joy. I’d say it goes directly towards how often comparing ourselves or what we have to others or what they have, makes us, well, an awful lot of negative shades of our former selves. Negative shades of jealousy, envy, resentfulness,… Continue reading Don’t Just Hand Over Your Joy
A Stroke of Good Fortune 