Grateful for Youth

Grateful for Youth

I’m grateful for all the youth in our lives these days. Not my youth, of course (which packed up and headed for warmer territory many years ago), but the youth of our many young friends, my sons, and their friends who all color our lives and bring a vibrancy that an...
Changing the Endings

Changing the Endings

At lunch recently a co-worker shared that growing up, her father owned a funeral home in a small Tennessee town; she and her siblings were all part of the business. They had a dark comedic side that they brought to the work, like getting a chuckle when their favorite...
Comfort Food

Comfort Food

 I read the blogs of friends who are in the midst of raising families and one friend who blogs (beautifully and deliciously!) about food. I recall my domestic days that seem in the distant past, those moments of making a family feel safe and loved. But now my...
Thirty Novembers Later

Thirty Novembers Later

You turn thirty today. How can that be? I hope you feel more joyous about this milestone than I felt on my own thirtieth birthday, heavy with a twin pregnancy, feeling old, old, tired and old and full of dread toward entering another decade.  Today, more...
Let’s Bake Peace

Let’s Bake Peace

When my mother died five years ago from throat cancer, we had been estranged for many, many years. For the first time since her death I have been working through our history by writing a memoir about our relationship for my MFA program. As a person of faith, it’s...

A Letter to My Blog

Dear Blog, Don’t look at me like with your blank, white face staring back at me. I know you exist. I know my role – I’m supposed to show up occasionally and write on you. Regularly, you say? Regularly show up and write on you? I’m sorry to break this to you, but it...