My daughter is a walking miracle. By all rights she should have been dead at least twice over. And she has the scars stretching across her abdomen to prove it.
It’s been six months since her body last tried to die, three months since the last time she was admitted to the hospital, and today she’s one of the top swimmers for her team and a straight A student.
I had a friend ask me how I was doing.
I should be fine. But I’m not. Continue reading “Not Yet—Finding Hope and Trying to Keep It”
A little more than 2 weeks ago, I left the hospital with my daughter where she’d nearly died a second time in two months.
Last night we celebrated her 13th birthday with a few of her friends out on Lake Michigan. And I’m in awe, slightly scared, fighting off tears (because that would be “totally embarrassing, mom!”). Continue reading “Restore—Rivers in the Dry Wasteland”
White stretches long reaching to the horizon where it curves seamless into the sky, over my head. A cocoon of monotone silence.
The frozen world can preserve, but it is cold welcome to stand static and alone…sense of self captured like some ancient beast in an iceberg—extinct and yet still here.
I snuggle my nose down into the collar of my coat, thankful for the heat preserved inside it. A short squeal and swish, and my son lands pell-mell at my feet. A mound of blue and grey against the snow. Continue reading “Finding the Different—and Seeing the Good”
His name is Leo, or at least that’s what he told me. He leans over the table across from me, and in mere minutes draws out a perfect manga character.
“What color should I make the shirt?” He asks me.
I hesitate, not quite knowing how to answer him. I’m careful in this world. I’m a visitor to this haven for the homeless and don’t know the rules yet. But his smooth ebony cheeks tell me he’s young, and barely a legal adult…if he’s even that old. Continue reading “The Face of the Homeless — Overwhelmed for Leo”
You all know that I struggle with feeling overwhelmed by the shear magnitude of everyday life…and that I underwent surgery late last week. The irony is that I wrote a piece for another blog about the spiritual discipline of rest…and they published it the day I was under the knife.
Talk about forced rest.
But it was a reminder that even in life’s unexpected, we have the opportunity to view upheaval as rest. But how do we find a moment to take a breath? And why are white spaces important?
I invite you to hop over to one of my favorite blogs and read my post to find out:
http://www.mudroomblog.com/whitespaces/
Oh the places between here and there.
It’s not quite spectacular white winter or lush green spring. It’s that place where you’re not young or old. Neither starting nor finishing. We’re neither here nor there, but on our way somewhere.
It’s been hot. Stifling even, and summer hasn’t even started in earnest yet. The sun over head glaring down, burning away at this crust of earth. The moisture in the ground giving in, and rising up in choking humidity.
But today, today, we awoke to the grey of coming rain. The air heavy in anticipation.
When the drops come, they come heavy, wrapped in a symphony for the senses.
The constant shushing against leaves, pinging on the Continue reading “There’s Something About Rain”
It was a mixed up kind of day. Grey clouds engulfing the sun only to have the sun burn through, lighting the woods in snips and patches.
I could see my daughter’s bright blue coat flitting between the just leafing out trees. Hunting a critter, building a fort, or some such childhood imagining. The neighbor kid voices rose and fell in excitement until half blue with cold they all stumbled through my door in search of water, a snack, and an ear to listen to their adventures.
It had been a rough day. I was running into an issue with my editorial work. And then running into it again. And then again…Those days everyone has sometimes.
As I listened to my kids’ chatter, it reminded me of the times when the hill behind my childhood house was a mountain and the squirrels were bears chasing my brothers and I. Or when we were lost in the “expansive” woods, and horsetail reeds became scavenged salads—definite survival food.
I miss those times. Times when imagination bled into real life. Where anything could be imagined better. And I realized there’s something to a childlike perspective that we, as adults, need to rediscover.
Not that we can to ignore Continue reading “Adult-Sized Problems, Childlike Solution”
It’s time for one of the two Thursdays of every month where I give a nod to the things that make us stop and say, “There’s something about . . .”
It was 4 am and my son had a stomachache. We’d already been up together for hours trying to find something, anything to help relieve the pain. At 1 and then again at 3:30 we tried warm bath, which temporarily helped, but we couldn’t sleep there. Ice pack only made it worse, a warm rice bag prevented tears, until it cooled . . . and still no sleep. Even vomiting an hour earlier didn’t relieve his tear-filled, curled-in pain.
I sat wedged in a corner, exhausted, cradling my boy’s head, thumb tracing down his face—forehead to nose, forehead to nose. My boy’s eyelids drooped as he whimpered and grabbed my hand. His small hands still dimpled at the knuckles, mine starting to show the ridges of age.
I was struck by the familiar sight. This fusion of old and young is one I’d seen before. Continue reading “There’s Something About Thursday: A Mother’s Hands”
It’s time for one of the two Thursdays of every month where I give a nod to the things that make us stop and say, “There’s something about . . .”
Spring. The warm air breathes life and this weekend, I drank it in. Weeding, prepping beds, setting up our trampoline, photographing all the life.
Every new leaf budding in a green so hot and bright it nearly melts the frosty morning on its own. The colors seem so out of place bursting above Winter’s dead debris. How yellow stamps out the cold snaps that carry Continue reading “There’s Something About Spring Unfurled”