February 20, 2012 – 10:44 am
“You have to admit, this is an indulgence,” my husband says, as we walk across the windswept campus to meet our son. We’ve flown all the way from New Hampshire to Minnesota, just to watch the last performance of a production of “A Chorus Line.” The way I see it: going out to dinner is an indulgence. Buying jewelry or a new pair of boots is definitely an indulgence. Raspberries in February, yes. But taking a couple of days off and flying halfway across the country to watch our son realize his life-long dream of being a musical director —…
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…
December 19, 2011 – 3:05 pm
“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.” – Etty Hillesum I find myself returning again and again to Etty Hillesum’s words, absorbing them, hoping they will take deep root and live in me during this holiday season. As I sit in my kitchen on this gray December morning, so aware of time passing and so wishing to make the most of each shared…
November 7, 2011 – 6:45 pm
He turns nineteen tomorrow. Last week, we were in Boston for a college interview. It was an opportunity for him to tell his story in person, this young man who attended three different high schools, spent nine winter weeks living in the woods and sleeping under a tarp, got into his share of mischeif, and has not always seen the point of homework. “If your fifteen-year-old self were sitting here in the room right now,” the college admissions person asked, “what would you have to say to him?” “Well,” the about-to-be-nineteen-year-old replied, “I’d have a lot of advice for him….
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…
