A few years ago, I packed all my child-raising books into shopping bags and delivered them to the used bookstore. It didn’t mean my mothering days were over, of course, but I figured that from here on out I should be able to manage on my own. My sons were young adults, after all, our struggles over bedtimes and screen time and green vegetables and messy rooms were already ancient history. We were forging new relationships with each other – complicated, yes, but I couldn’t imagine ever again turning to an “expert” for advice on how to get along with…
I long ago lost count of how many times I’ve made this cake. The recipe, clipped from the Boston Globe in the pre-internet age, is pasted with rubber cement into a notebook of recipes I began keeping the year before I got married in 1987. The pages are all loose now, held together with a rubber band. But I know exactly where the yellowed, glaze-spattered cake recipe is, should I ever need a quick refresher. In fact, as I realized while creaming the butter and sugar yesterday morning, I don’t really refer to the recipe anymore. I know it by…
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” – Meister Eckhart “Thank you.” Maybe these words really are enough. Certainly “Thank you” is the phrase on my lips today, the emotion overflowing in my heart, the words I want to say to you, the prayer of gratitude I offer up to the universe. To every single fellow traveler, to everyone who’s read Magical Journey and shared it with a friend, I offer a huge springtime bouquet of thank you’s. Here’s what we’re creating together: *Attention!…
March 18, 2013 – 10:05 am
You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through. Become inclined to watch the way of rain When it falls slow and free. Imitate the habit of twilight, Taking time to open the well of color That fostered the brightness of day. Draw alongside the silence of stone Until its calmness can claim you. ― John O’Donohue, from “A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted” Hard as it is for my…
You could say, we are waiting here. Waiting to find out which colleges will accept Jack for next fall. (So far, one yes, one no, one wait list.) Waiting to see what choices he’ll make and which school — after a year of working and living on his own and figuring out whether he even wants to go to college at all — will finally feel like “the one.” Waiting to see if the next round of X-rays will show further healing in his two broken vertebrae. Waiting for his pain to disappear. Waiting to find out if he’ll be…
