Posts tagged “family

Until One Day…

Posted on February 15, 2016

It was 10am and the girls were camped out at the dining room table which was scattered with arts supplies and notebooks. A fire roared in the wood stove, while a heat-drunk cat sprawled decadently nearby, paws akimbo. I glanced through the window at the outdoor thermometer, it read -8°. Avery and Briar were both in fleece footie pajamas, a post-holiday impulse buy spurred by years of longing from my long-torsoed Ave. When I was packing two nights before I called Finley into the laundry room, “Honey, I can’t find your footie pjs. Do you know where they are?” “No,” she said. “Well, if you don’t help me find them, then I can’t bring them with us to Vermont.” “Ok,” she shrugged. “I don’t want you…

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How is it February?

Posted on February 9, 2016

My last big act of 2015 was the culmination of wanting control over one part of my life. I ached to create a clearly defined and sustained period of time spent focused on the girls. I didn’t want it to be commercial or rooted in eating, no shopping, no Starbucks, no movie watching or even reading. I wanted something you can’t choreograph or even plan for, but I tried. I’ll say right now that I should let that be enough, to have tried and to have done so with love, I think that’s it. My method was to make the advent calendar a mechanism for bringing us together. All those days stacked up together, each with some element that would connect us, no matter…

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The Distance Up Close

Posted on September 14, 2015

The ground beneath me is moving in ways that surprise me. It’s like I have one contact in and one out; some things are in perfect focus while others force me to squint and rub my eye. The hardest thing is knowing when it’s meant to be blurry. Am I crying? Where is the bird’s eye view I’ve come to expect? I long to have my response be smooth and natural, but it’s more like a violent lurch and stumble. When I manage to back off I worry that it’s motivated more by fatigue and irritability than genuine awareness that I ought to give the girls space. Then when I stay close it nags at me that I’m creating an unnatural tether that keeps them from moving toward new things. The first day back to…

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Find Your Elixir

Posted on April 26, 2015

I was scrolling through Facebook ever so gently. Lately that space has become very toxic for me, so I try to move swiftly in order to move over things that are unpleasant in the quickest way. I saw a link from Maggie about how it is our involvement and pursuit of our own happiness that we truly find it. It made me smile. It may not be as simple as believing that you can be happy for everyone, but as I saw the sentiment in black and white on the screen, shared by someone who knows intimately the struggle with mental and emotional swings, I felt hope.   This past week I’ve been on the West Coast for a super quick, very important visit…

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On Losing a Pet & Loving Again

Posted on November 12, 2014

I didn’t know when, or how, but I knew the day would come when the need to fill the hole left by Mae, our amazing kitten. The girls are sensitive and intelligent, often comprehending things in ways that I almost wish that they wouldn’t at their age. Along with the dolls and karate classes, I wish that I could offer some measure of oblivion to pad their all too brief childhoods. Mae’s death blew the doors off the idea of having anything more than a suggestion in the grand scheme of how life goes. I tried to do things in the days and weeks that followed her  abrupt passing to carve out special time to try new things with the girls. As we passed the year mark of when we…

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