Sticks and Stones

“You like to be angry.  You do it with me, you do it with other people too.” I don’t write a lot about my husband in this space.  I’ve definitely gone light on the troubles in our marriage.   I have never thought it really was appropriate for me to talk about truly publicly, and only [...]

Haters Gonna Hate

I chuckled looking at the computer screen, nearly choking on my first cup of coffee.  Was that the best they could do? This week our town held its annual budget vote.  In our tiny New England town, the residents have to approve the spending plan each and every year at the polls.  It’s called an [...]

The Family You Have

My sister emailed me over the weekend; she asked if it would be possible for me to visit Michigan next month for her daughter’s birthday and an event at her son’s school. Her email initially bugged.  I’m not going to lie.  I’ve lived in the Northeast for seven years, and I can count on two [...]

Life With My Girl

I can still remember the moment when I learned I was going to have a daughter.  I was flat on my back in the ultrasound room of my doctor’s office in Stillwater, Oklahoma.  R was with me waiting with baited breath as the technician measured the femur, checked the heart chambers, and did the full [...]

Dysfunctional Thanksgiving

It’s the day after Thanksigiving and I feel decidedly….ungrateful. And for the life of me, I’m trying to get myself back to that place of gratitude, to look around me at my blessings and my gifts, of all the rambling statuses on Facebook that people posted yesterday about life and love and happiness….but I’m just [...]

Passage

I tried to write out every little thing I could remember about my great aunt last Saturday.  I think because it was the right thing to do, to ponder and think and remember all of the things that I hadn’t thought of in so long.  But more, I think, because I felt lost in what [...]

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

“You need to come to the school and pick him up,” said the voice of my son’s special education teacher on the phone. We’d been riding a positive wave of good news as far as Michael had been concerned.  His last conference had brought me to tears; he was working on grade level, in the [...]

Dear Pat

Dear Pat, I was very sorry to hear of your mother’s passing.  It is such a profound thing, to lose your mother.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re twenty or sixty; it is always hard, always difficult and especially so when you share your home and your lives with each other.  I hope that you are [...]

Bitter

I couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter that my son had called me last night and told me that he’d finally heard from his biological aunt about the funeral.  She had thanked him for his concern, told him of the nice service in the only town his great grandmother had ever known.  She had told him [...]

Instant Message of Pain

I sat in front of the television, laptop balanced on my lap two days later.  It was ten or so, the little ones in bed, my husband in Michigan.  He worked there now, about eight days a month, him having been given the job after all but it being determined that it wasn’t a big [...]