cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
I put it off for as long as I possibly could—the slimming down and organization of our fourth bedroom. We established it as the playroom when we moved in with our little girls six years ago, but I was finally accepting that, at ages 15 and 12, they were doing far less playing than ever…
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Dear Baby, I only knew you existed for 48 hours. While our time together was brief, your impact was not. You proved my heart could expand to love someone I never met. You proved I was ready for motherhood. I never heard your beating heart, but you changed mine forever. Love, Mama
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“We were not meant for endings.”* The first time I heard these words I was attending a women’s workshop in Washington. I didn’t just hear these words but felt them in the pit of my soul. Endings have marked me and my story since the beginning of my life here on this earth. One of…
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A casket is really heavy. In fact, after heaving one into the back of a hearse for the first time, I Googled it. Ranging from 160 to 220 pounds, a standard casket, plus the weight of the body inside, easily exceeds 300 pounds. My dad, my brother, plus a few funeral home attendants and I…
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I love a big entrance. Boisterous hellos, tight hugs, chatter on top of chatter. I’m great with an enthusiastic greeting. But I’ve also been quick to look for the back door. I haven’t always given quite as much drama to the goodbye as I do with the hello. In fact, I’ve been known to slip…
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I am familiar with goodbyes. I said goodbye to my innocence at 4-years-old. From ages 4 to 12, I buried my voice in an effort to extinguish the ongoing abuse and survive. By age 13 I had learned that my sadness engendered pity and my sexuality, attention. Male parents for whom I babysat groped for…
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Over two decades ago, I spoke what I thought was a final goodbye to my mother. I am easily transported back to the stark hospital room, the four of us adult children gathered together with our families. This ending followed her battle with a dreadful disease that ravaged her body for over six years. She…
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We were newlyweds, in our first apartment, performing the dreaded church-shopping. We visited nearby churches, each one similar to the ones I attended as a child. Pews, pianos, choirs. They were sparsely attended, and though it was obvious we were visitors, very few people greeted us. So we moved on. I had heard of a…
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I have one more year left in my twenties. Some might say I’m a young spring chicken with barely any life under my belt (but we don’t wear belts anymore, thank you, high-waisted jeans!). That’s not untrue. I am pretty young in the grand scheme of things, but as I consider the seasons that have…
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There’s a little known story about a guy named Jack and a girl named Rose. Rose didn’t share her space with Jack, so he died. Oh, you know the story? I saw the movie Titanic when I was 12 years old, and even then, it didn’t make sense. They were lovers. They spent the entire…
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