Trying to close in on finishing something like a first draft of my book in the next few weeks, I’m finding myself more aware than usual of the difference between writing and more quotidian matters. As he prepared to start…
Especially in a time when news headlines blare the word “Chaos!” to describe what’s going on in the White House, it’s comforting to know that we can still find soothing symmetry in our world. Sometimes we barely even have to…
“We were both right!” The girl I mentor, who is now a whopping 14, said this jubilantly as she got in my car a couple of weeks ago, heading to her hip-hop dance class. I didn’t even know what…
It’s the New Year, so will it be the New You? Sounds like too tall an order, probably. A better bet will most likely be nourishing our own sense of at-home-ness within ourselves. Sure, we can and probably should do…
If, like mine, your heart gets pounding faster with a stark contrast, then you must have already noticed that we’re in a fire and ice time of year. First, the ice. Asserting itself in streams that persist in running, the…
Whenever I get tired of tracking my daily ups and downs, which is often, I find it refreshing to pay closer attention to the ups and downs of trees instead. Looking around outside with more vigor takes me out of…
“Why I am still getting these cross-country team emails from last year’s list?!” My annoyance is immediate, since, harrumph, we don’t have time for messages that don’t concern us. But then it melts away: just because my own son is…
Amidst terrifying darkness, glimmering points of light feel like miracles. Once again we are reeling from a mass shooting; once again we search for answers; once again we keep going about our business, even as we know that many families…
A friend of mine recently brought her husband to the bus station to embark on a faraway trip. Then a friend of hers asked, “How did you feel about not going?” She replied, “I don’t know. ALASKA!’ You guessed right:…
I’ve just had a brush with some of my ancestors, and the experience has left me quaking in my sneakers. OK, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. I wasn’t exactly frightened…more stirred up, the way somebody on a…