On June 2, 1986, John and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary in our little condo in Santa Ana, CA. We were babies. Apparently, cotton is the tradition (gift) for that 2nd year. I just learned that this very minute. That seems right since I had stacks of soft cotton receiving blankets in the nursery. … Read more
We’ve been front and center in Portland watching my grandson’s science experiment, a Cup of Caterpillars. (If you watch this short video, you see that the caterpillars hang on tight to their “ceiling”—and this is important.) Unfortunately, we left before the butterfly finale. Watching this evolving miracle, I was reminded of the words from last … Read more
More to This A beloved pointed out these flowers (“The Pink Dogwood”) because the petals point upward to the sky. I wonder how they have such strength to go against gravity. Now I see them everywhere. I’ve been taking photos of them because I think the delicate petals are looking up–reaching up, imagining … Read more
Thoughts on Love Speaking of love, I met Anne Lamott once, and by “met,” I mean fangirled. She may have been accosted at her speaking event in Corta Madera, CA. Today is publication day for her new book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love. I rapid-fire downloaded the Kindle and Audible versions this morning so … Read more
What Do I Wear? At the bottom of Snoqualmie Falls in Washington State, there’s a jungly showcase—lush towers of green. Bottom to top, seamless, monochromatic, intricately adorned trees dressed by Nature’s Tailor. Trunk after trunk bear tangled arms and fingers that reach out one to another in majestic hand-holding. Many engaged in a … Read more
I hear the whirlwind whip, the pummeling, relentless rain, and the sudden, extended chime on my phone: the National Weather Service warning me of flash flooding. It’s been “flooding” for a while over here, guys. Maybe where you are, too. I look back down at my computer and re-read the two quotes I’ve … Read more
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. … Read more
It’s that thing where you read a random quote and you so completely identify with it you say, This is me—I embody these words. This quote tells my story and my state in just one, razor-sharp, spot-on, succinct, nailed-it line. Metaphorically, I slapped this name tag on my New Year’s Eve pajamas by posting it … Read more
Home for Christmas A film that covers three days where scenes are sequenced backward and the story unfolds in reverse, ala “Memento:” Christmas Eve, 2022, we were on the phone with a funeral home making arrangements. The day before that, I was sitting at my dad’s kitchen table playing Rummikub with him when we … Read more
