“Tug on anything at all,” naturalist John Muir once wrote, “and you’ll find it connected to everything else in the universe.” I sit alone at my kitchen table on this April Monday morning, waiting for the sun to slide up and into full view. I watch a pair of chickadees trading places at the feeder. And then I type these five words — “tug on anything at all” — and wonder, is it really that simple, is everything really connected to everything else? Am I but a single strand of thread, inextricably woven into some billowing cosmic fabric? It is…
I can’t recall how many times a reader has written to say, “I wish I’d found your books years ago, when my children were young.” I had that same feeling myself, reading Kim John Payne’s very wise and beautiful book Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids. So many of the books I did read when my own sons were small left me feeling confused and inadequate. What I wanted was a calm friend on the page, someone who would reassure me that I was fully capable of giving my children…
I began writing my first book, “Mitten Strings for God,” the year Henry and Jack were five and eight. My husband and I were right in the thick of it, parenting two small children. We were busy, exhausted, finding our way, certain that everyone else must be better at this than we were. I remember struggling to accommodate and care for our two boys — so very different from each of us and, miraculously, complete polar opposites of one another as well — and wishing these two single-edition models had arrived with instruction manuals of some sort, so we wouldn’t…
Unfortunately, there is still snow on the ground, even though it’s April. Fortunately, a robin convention is underway in my front yard and there are crocuses blooming alongside the stone wall. Unfortunately, I thought I’d been left off the guest list to a dear friend’s surprise birthday party. Fortunately, it turned out that the hostess had an old email address and was wondering why she hadn’t heard from me — just as I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from her. Unfortunately, I’d already made plans for that evening but, fortunately, I was able to stop by the party long…
