February 5, 2012 – 8:33 pm
We sat around the kitchen table after dinner last night — my son Henry, my husband Steve, and two of our dearest friends in the world, Lisa and Kerby. I met Lisa eighteen years ago, when Henry visited her kindergarten classroom for the first time as a small, shy four-year-old. He already had an IEP from the public school system and a medical file that was two-inches thick. He’d been diagnosed with asthma at three months, sensory integration dysfunction and low muscle tone at two, and various other physical and developmental delays and concerns ever since. He saw an occupational…
October 31, 2011 – 12:41 pm
It’s a pretty remarkable Halloween – two feet of snow are piled up outside the window, and the pumpkins are buried under white stuff. I’m sure that, all over the Northeast, moms and kids are rethinking Halloween costumes, trying to figure out how to bundle princesses into parkas, whether a Zombie in a snowsuit still has a fear factor, how to convince a six-year-old that even ghosts wear boots. Such parenting challenges are behind me, though I well remember the joy of a balmy Halloween night and, on a frosty one, the delicate negotiations required to keep everyone both reasonably…
October 11, 2011 – 11:02 pm
There is always something else that needs doing. But there are never enough days like yesterday, days when the trees don brilliant robes and stand tall, rustling softly in their finery. When the sky melts into azure infinity, when the air is as soft as breath, and nasturtiums bloom like crown jewels scattered upon a tumbled carpet of fallen leaves. The thrum of insects, the call of a crow, the precious light, the honeyed warmth – it was too lovely an October afternoon to miss. A day that whispered, “Ignore the to-do list, shut off the computer, and play hooky.”…
August 26, 2011 – 11:37 am
All through August I’ve been out the door each day at 6:15, to run two and a half miles to town in time for a 7 a.m. yoga class. It is only for a month, this early class, but I’m hoping that after it ends I’ll continue with my own variation on the new routine. My morning run began as something I was making myself do; with each passing day, though, it’s felt more and more like a privilege, a gift, a blessing. A few days ago Kristen at Motherese wrote about finding flow in her running this summer, and…
When our sons were young we had a tradition of spending a week each summer on Monhegan Island, eleven miles off the coast of Maine. For quite a few years we managed to get there right after school let out. Carrying coolers packed with food and bags full of books and sketchpads and crayons, we’d arrive on the ferry and then find our way on foot to some bare-bones rented cottage, a place I’d secured sight unseen the moment the year’s rental properties were offered, at nine a.m. each New Year’s Day. Sitting at my desk in the midst of…
