My Mother’s Birthday

Dear Children, Here it is – Mom’s birthday again. Will I ever get better at expressing my feelings about my mother?  I know that the longer I live, the more I understand both her and myself. Observing her difficulty in making connection is an object lesson in love. In the years when you were under […]

Tell me about your travels…

Hi Over There… I hear about your travels. I see an Instagram or a FB post now and then. But how are you REALLY doing? And what? And where? Privileged young people have been heading across The Pond for their growing up adventures for as long there has been passage, I suppose. I didn’t make […]

Day of the Young

‘The mention of my child’s name may bring tears to my eyes, but it never fails to bring music to my ears.” Bereaved Parent It’s harder this year. Placing my nephew’s photo on the altar is an inescapable reminder that he is gone. And it brings all of the young faces into clear focus. Dia […]

Happy Birthday, Dear Daughter

Dear Daughter, I remember your birth with great joy. I suppose those first steps in motherhood were halting, but I didn’t realize my own youth and ignorance. I lived in the euphoria of first love. Closing my eyes I can almost smell the softness of your baby skin. I can feel the wisps of hair […]

That Day…That Birthday

Dear Grandson, And then there was that day when we remembered you, we talked about you, we wondered when to call, and then we went to bed. And there was the next morning when I sat up in bed – stunned and dismayed. We didn’t call you, our darling grandson, and say, “Happy Birthday”. We […]

You are enough!

I am re-posting this as a form letter. Perhaps it will help you write your your child or grandchild. To what standard do you hold yourself?  Who is the paragon to whom you compare yourself? You do not disappoint! You are a person of soul and virtue.  You may have lived through things or done […]

Losing a Friend

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness… Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise…“ Psalms 100 I am not a memory keeper. I look to others in my life to save the details of my history – to rehash and relish silly […]

There are all sorts of love.

On my way to a nephew’s wedding celebration today. Thinking of these connections I am reprinting this post from 2009. “And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”  Raymond Carver I had a […]

My Mother, My Life

Dear Mother. I wish I had understood you better in our years together. I’ve had a lot of time now to come to see you from my own perspective as a mother and as a daughter. A mother who is a bundle of unresolved complexities is never easy. Our culture glorifies that woman who is […]

To My Little Sister

Dear Sister: What have you been to me? A baby who disrupted excruciatingly long road trips to visit family in Indiana. A bratty three-year-old who manifested all of the behavior of a child born late in a troubled marriage. An alien pre-adolescent who lived with and in the shadow of my mother and so sometimes […]