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The Giving Tree
As I pondered which book has been the most influential in my life, I browsed the shelves in my home and thought back to the classics I read in highschool and college. There are many authors that have challenged and shaped me such as Katherine Patterson, Annie Dillard, Ernest Hemingway, Milan Kundera, Anne Lamott, and Thornton Wilder, but as I reached back further into childhood, one book that stands out and I’ve always considered as my favorite is Shel Silverstien’s…
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The Gas Station Jerk
This morning I’d like to explore getting my feelings hurt over silly things. The first little story is about my cat, and it may seem unrelated to the story of the gas-station-jerk, but my emotional fall out from each is tethered to the same starting point. Nala is our fifteen year old cat that we adopted from the SPCA about a week or two after we returned from our honeymoon. After doing a few puzzles in our tiny one bedroom…
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Duke Gardens with Friends
At the end of March, the kids had a day off school for a teacher workday. After seeing an Instagram post about a “Bloom Walk” in Duke Gardens, I gave the boys a heads up that we would be making a trip, and I tagged my friend Erika on the post, hoping she would see it and hadn’t already booked her day. Friday morning she messaged me and we made plans to pack snacks and hit the road at about…
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Reaching Back
Do you ever try to reach deep into your memories and remember places and how you felt in them and what you were doing? I love looking far back and finding the small person for whom I now have so much more compassion, with the benefit of hindsight and years of growth. The older I get, the more similar to her I become. I’ve always mourned the loss of childhood, but now I’m finding I never did fully let it…
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What Will You Be?
A friend was standing on the front stoop after picking up her son, and she thanked me for sharing my mid-life crisis post. She had been having similar conversations with friends, one of whom observed the ridiculousness of her own crisis when her high school junior was on the precipice life-defining choices. It struck me that I’ve never felt like I had arrived or become what I owed it to the world, my parents, God or the foundations that funded…
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By a Thread
Nearly weekly I’m hearing of mother-friends in a similar season of life, with kids in elementary school or slated towards middle, heading back to their careers or starting off in new vocations. They are doing what is called “going back to work”. It must be relieving for them to no longer have to answer the question that everyone is thinking and some explicitly ask, “So what will you do now that the kids are in school?” I’ve witnessed this migration…
