Today is December 21, Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It will be Christmas in just a couple of days. Coming off open heart surgery in late September, I promised myself two things about Christmas 2023. First, I would not overdo it. I would not stress about gifts or decorating or baking and canning. I would do what[…]
On Sisters …
Two of my top five favorite writers are Nora and Delia Ephron.[i] Nora and Delia are sisters who (along with the younger Amy and Hallie) all grew up to become professional writers. There was never any question that they would be writers. Their parents were successful screenwriters, and it was their mother who set all four girls on the path[…]
On My Heart (A Series)… Starting Recovery
It is my third full day home. It has been a good day. Nights are still hard. I still have nightmares. The dreams are vivid and violent and full of every awful thing. They are like a data dump of horror. I hope they go away soon. The pain medicine wears off like clockwork at 2:30 a.m., about a half[…]
On Wishes, Dreams, Goals, Whatever (just don’t call them resolutions).
Happy New Year 2023! Having given up “resolutions” (which I see as just an excuse to find something wrong with me, as a person and I don’t need an excuse to do that), a few years ago I started to write 10 New Year’s goals with emphasis on a Top 3. When I started, they were just open ended with[…]
On Writing Off the Year…
2022 has to be a better year. We’ve all heard it. We’ve all said it. 2020 and 2021 were horrible years, complete and total losses. We were optimistic, even if cautiously so, that 2022 was going to be better. We had hope for this brand new set of twelve months. We were betting on 2022 being the redemption year for[…]
On My Birthday…
Today is my birthday. I’ve been dreading this one, but no more than the last one. I am closer now to 60 than ever before. I sometimes worry that I’m running out of time. Is that something other people worry about? The picture here is me at 2 months old (according to my mother’s lovely script on the back). This[…]
On Birth…
Behold the first moments of the life of my grandson, Jameson Walker. April 10, 2015. I was there. I took this picture. It remains one of the most prominent and precious moments of my life and, arguably, his. My own children were born via C-Section, but had they been born naturally without intervention by the medical team, I would not[…]
Remembering Kindness
More often than not, I wake up in the morning with a random song in my head. Also, more often than not, there is no reason I can think of for that particular song to be there. Recently, the song that greeted me was one I had not heard, or even thought about it since 4th or 5th grade. My[…]
Stuck in the Middle
I am a recovering middle child. I have the double whammy of birth orders. I was born the middle child of a brood of five, but also the middle girl. I spent a great deal of my time trying to be noticed or being so very good that I would be, if not noticed, at least appreciated. Born and raised[…]
They can’t eat ya? What does that even mean?
“They can’t eat ya” is something my father said to me any time I hit a rough patch in my life. So, roughly, 27 million times (give or take a couple million). When I was a kid, I didn’t get it at all. When I was a teenager, I decided it was one of those stupid things that adults say.[…]