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a couple things …
I just finished reading Jane Eyre for the 19th time. (At least.) I just adore the novel. Every single time I read it something new strikes me. I see it with different eyes. Remember the cool Literature Odyssey I was planning to take my students on last year? The one that was canceled when everything for everyone was cancelled? We’re reinventing it a little bit. It’s a teeny bit less literary (because so many of our spots in Massachusetts are still closed) and that hurts my literary-loving heart. But it’s also still really fun and (Lord willing) will take place in June and involves seeing wild ponies. I’m just excited…
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my ideals and my reality: they aren’t lining up
Today my dad stopped in for a short visit. It’s always good to see his smiling face. Last month on one of his pop overs he gave the kids an art assignment – they were to draw a picture inspired by a song he loved. It is a song that imagines what the Garden of Eden might have looked like before sin entered the world. (It’s called “When Dragon’s Hearts Were Good”, hence the dragon themed art it inspired.) The kids had a time period in which to complete their artwork and they all worked hard, to varying degrees. On this trip he swooped in and judged the contest…
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walking the line
There are days when I think I’ve got a couple of things under control – a portion of bits and pieces working together alright. When I feel like the routine is serving us and I have meals pre-planned and the moments feel sort of in my grasp. And then there are other days. Moments here and there where tears surprise me – from worry or fear or exhaustion. A heavy weight settling first on my shoulders and then on my chest and landing somehow in my throat, squeezing so that just the smallest stream of air can flow in and out, clouding my mind and making my view a…
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the questions. the answers.
Things change and get strange With this movement of time. It’s happening right now to you. (Avett Brothers, Down With the Shine) Each month, each week, each day, each hour – it’s the same and it’s different. Time goes and it slips and it sloshes and it wraps me up in tangles and it finds me sitting at the kitchen table for hours making lesson plans and it pushes me into meetings for work and propels me down hiking trails with my children and it keeps me up late and has me rising early. It’s time. It’s balance. It’s never enough and always too much. And it’s the same…
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switching words; seeing light
Sinking ship. Wheels falling off the cart. These are the words I have used to describe my life. My heart. My story. Sometimes they are the words I feel are true. Sometimes they are the words I assume other people feel are true when they look at me. They’re definitely the words I have felt have been chosen for me. I am beginning to see how they are also the words that I have chosen to sit under. The words I have circled in red. Underlined. Used a highlighter to accentuate. The words I might as well have tattooed on my body. (Don’t worry Dad – it’s just a…
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plate spinning
I guess last week I took an accidental hiatus from writing. And from responding in a timely manner to my emails. I’ve felt a lot like I’ve been swimming underwater and the struggle to “get it all done” has been overwhelming. This is the song a lot of people are singing, I know. Life is full of all the things and the list of people who can do All The Things for you is short. In fact, my list usually feels like there is just one name on it. My own. I’m guessing this is not an incredibly unique feeling that I am describing. Maybe we’re all carrying too…
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Lost and Found : one decade down
It always happens in the shower. That’s when I find myself revisiting memories and thinking about things I didn’t even know I was thinking about. Ten years ago. A decade. Ten years ago my life looked very different. For that matter, my shower looked different too! For one – we had two of them. (What a gift, people – TWO showers.) My marriage was in a good place. My mother was alive. The view out my front window was Virginia mountain and field and river’s edge. I didn’t know any children by the names of Otto Fox or Piper Finn. I wasn’t teaching school and I was tripping over…
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the divorce diaries. entry 4.
I find it bizarre (unsettling) how a title, a life, an entire thing can happen to you, be legitimately forced upon you and your only choice is to survive or to die. The label is there. boom. I’m sure there are loads of areas where this is true, but I don’t think I’ve fallen under many of them before personally and none so traumatic and dramatic as the hurricane that has been divorce. Even typing it hurts my fingertips. I can sincerely say that it feels as if divorce has happened upon me. Has happened to me. Like a disease. Like a terrible medical prognosis. Like a death. And…
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What To Tell Your Friends When They Tell You Their Marriage Is Broken
Maybe I’ll be writing about stuff I don’t want to write about until the day I die. That’s probably kind of true. Last month I wrote a post about Helping Your Friends Through Sad Stuff. You guys – why is there always SO MUCH sad stuff? If it isn’t in the news (and it is ALWAYS in the news) then it’s on your living room sofa and at the coffee shop and it’s showing up in your gmail account and dripping into you phone via text and emoticons. A lot of bad stuff goes down. At church last weekend there were some guys wearing t-shirts that said “share your…
Keep Reading . . .
love. (for a concert and a band.)
share the good
you can’t call it a mid-life crisis.
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. . . sometimes
Sometimes you start school in July and it’s a really good day. Everyone gets their math done (because first week math lessons are all glorious confidence-building reviews) and your classic procrastinator takes pride in the fact that his list is actually entirely completed before lunch and you wonder if this is a new leaf or just a lucky first day break. Sometimes your dog’s hair gets cut too short and he looks like a big-headed fuzzy noodle somehow. You have trouble making direct eye contact with him because you feel his shame radiating. The groomer assures you that in less than a month all of that shaggy perfection will…
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everything’s perfectly normal here
Evidence that I live in a bit of a madhouse: _______ About twenty minutes after midnight Ryder places his paws on my face to alert me that he would like to exit the home to use the facilities. (Or to lie down outside where it is cooler than inside our home. Poor hairy fellow.) I note the time. Again. 12:20 am. The Yukon’s back door is cranked wide open. And has been since we loaded the car for a camping trip – oh, I don’t know – SIX hours ago. ________ My eleven year old is sound asleep. Wearing a camping shirt, cargo shorts and with his knife/multipurpose tool attached…
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telling it again and again
Over the past few weeks I’ve seen this idea pop up many times. The idea that it is in the retelling of a painful story that some of the pain can be eased. The idea that with more and more tellings of one’s darkest stories that the distance between the experience deepens and the hurt lessens. On our last visit, Sherry reminded me that when you can tell your story without crying, you’ve made progress. It’s so important to have friends and people with whom to tell your story. It’s why sometimes you find yourself telling your story to complete strangers – like a practice round or something. It’s why…
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so much water . . . .
I have a friend whose Instagram handle is “treading water”. I smiled when I saw it the first time. She has four young children and I understood the sentiment all too well. As I was pushing the pictures up on my phone this week and saw her name pop up, I thought of that title once more. Treading water. Yes. It’s a little less funny to me right now though. That’s precisely what I feel as if I am doing. Treading water. I mean, barely. Treading water but just hardly keeping my head up above the current and swallowing an awful lot of water and gasping for quite a bit of…
