Designing a life of peace, joy and laughter.
A few hours ago, I sat across a fast-food table from my 8-year-old drinking a peppermint chip milkshake. (My original idea was to eat healthy before Thanksgiving tomorrow, but plans changed.) We were on a lunch date. He wanted to bring a deck of Empathy Cards, which is a kind of game, like table topics. … Continue reading Nourish.
Last Sunday afternoon, we were setting down plates and moving serving dishes from the kitchen to the table. My 8-year-old said, “Mom, why do we only have lunch together on Sundays?” “What do you mean?” I asked. “I mean, like, we don’t eat lunch together on Saturdays or any other day…we just come in and … Continue reading Lunch.
I recently heard a saying in Arabic: ‘Yom asal, yom basal’, which means ‘One day honey, one day onions’ and speaks of the bittersweet quality of life. Last week, I was bitter during a very sweet spring break vacation. It was a trip filled with both joy and pain. On Saturday a week ago, I … Continue reading Days of honey, days of onions.
And into the forest I go; to lose my mind and find my soul."John Muir Olympic National Park has been a favorite vacation we have taken with our kids. It was also one of the most challenging to plan, because the peninsula is so large, and we had no idea where to stay or which … Continue reading Visiting Olympic National Park with kids
When you’re a little kid, you’re a little bit of everything. Artist, scientist, athlete, scholar. Sometimes it seems like growing up is a process of giving those things up, one by one. I guess we all have one thing we regret giving up, that we really miss, that we gave up because we were too … Continue reading Choose.
On December 21, I went to see Santa. My soon-to-be-8-year-old son wanted to see Santa, so I agreed to wait in line with him. It was so hot. My heavy wool coat was draped over my arm because it was humid in the tropical conservatory at Fredrick Meijer Gardens where Santa was stationed for the … Continue reading In the land of the living.
My good friend texted this phrase this morning: “Life has been relentless this month.” Relentless. Do you feel that way? In the past two weeks, our family has had a health scare, a back injury, and two Covid exposures with all the resulting contingency plans. Nothing catastrophic, but I resonated with the word “relentless” when … Continue reading Really old graffiti.
“No one knows you like they know youAnd no one probably ever will.You can grow up, make new ones,But truth is there’s nothing like old friends.‘Cause you can’t make old friends.”Ben Rector, “You Can’t Make Old Friends” from the album Magic On the first day of school when I was 10, the new girl asked … Continue reading You can’t make old friends.
Consuming a moment. I tried to consume a moment last week, and save it for later. We were on vacation on the Pacific coast of Washington, in Olympic National Park. It was late morning on a Wednesday, and we wanted to get to a beach for low tide. We hoped to maybe see a starfish. … Continue reading Beholding vs. consuming
When I was a teenager, I sweated at the McDonalds drive-thru and saved my after-tax dollars to buy clothes. Minimum wage took ages to add up to a pair of Guess jeans, so when my friends hung out at restaurants, I would order a Coke and say I wasn’t hungry. There was no sense in … Continue reading Feast.
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