January 25, 2012 – 8:54 am
I’ve spent the last three weeks in one place doing one thing. And, although I will leave my mother’s house two days from now with a stack of manuscript pages, I will also leave with a great deal more knowledge about how I get in my own way. There are people, many of them dear friends of mine, who can’t wait to sit down alone and shape their thoughts and feelings into sentences and paragraphs. I so wish I were one of them. There are some who have learned to trust their creative process, others who entertain a muse, some…
For years my friend Maude has been saying that we should go to her little cabin in Maine. Somehow, although we talk about it every summer, we’ve never actually managed to set aside the time to make the trip. Leaving home means finding someone to water the garden, tidying up the desk, answering the emails, making sure that kids and husbands and dogs and all other commitments are covered. Easier to murmur, “someday, maybe,” and put the adventure off for another year. I’m so glad that this time, when she asked, I just said yes. It’s a five-hour drive door…
“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…
April 18, 2011 – 12:51 pm
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…
