cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
My mother-in-law’s phone call appears on my screen on average five times a day. Ever since we moved her to a memory care facility, she has called begging to be transferred back to her home. My heart breaks to know that her progressing dementia will never allow her to live in her own home again.…
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Last month my 88-year-old mother moved into an assisted living facility located 4.5 miles from my house. This is four miles further than we’ve lived from each other for the past nine years. While it may sound like a negligible change, it feels much more significant, for this half-mile has been traversed far more often…
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It has been 40 years since my dad died and almost 25 years since my mom breathed her last. My in-laws have been gone close to two decades. As a young woman, I was already navigating life without any hope of a living presence of my parents. During certain stages of life, this absence has…
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For the past fourteen years, the heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been a constant in my life. With two boys coming of age as the 34 movies in this franchise were released, I spent many, if not most, of their birthdays from ages 8 to 18 sitting in a darkened theater watching the…
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Eighth graders at my former middle school were asked to memorize Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” in English class. To be honest, I wondered why. Why was this poem required instead of Frost’s popular, oft-quoted “The Road Not Taken”? However, I didn’t create the syllabus, so I held my…
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I was called a tween this week: the in-between years of parenting your own kids while taking care of your own parents. It sucks every bit as much as middle school. The night before, we received a phone call at 2am. It was not the first time. My mother-in-law woke disoriented, fearful of the man…
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No, thank you mingles together as November unfolds into December and the waiting that marks Advent mingles together all that my heart holds in the realm of emptiness and hope.
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When you sift something, you end up with remnants left once the sifting stops. Those remnants feel very precious, and I find myself wanting to protect them for always.
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