Window Thinking
I read Anne Lamott’s latest book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers during a stretch of gorgeous March weather. The days here in Anchorage were getting longer, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. One afternoon Ethan and I even squeezed fresh lemonade and set it outside to chill. There were still …
Country Road take me home, to the place I belong….. John Denver In April we flew to Oregon and spent 2+ weeks fully immersed in an unusually warm and absolutely glorious Oregon spring. We left piles of Alaska snow and a string of days stretched backward to months spanning a very long, white and cold winter. …
The other day I watched through the window as an older lady and her caregiver navigated the narrow path of dry, bare pavement that etched its way through our snowy, ice-packed street. The older lady was using a walker to aid her steps and all of the sudden I remembered: This picture was taken the …
Ethan and I were in the hospital the morning after his birth when the doctor on call for our family practice clinic came to check on him. I was surprised to see this doctor because he did not practice in our clinic, but at a clinic in a nearby town. He’s a long time family …
I had a bunch of broken ribs when I was pregnant with Ethan. I have no memory of the car accident that broke the ribs, but I remember the first trimester + broken ribs. I found out I was pregnant the day before the accident. After a long, hot June Saturday tromping through central Oregon …
The word home summons up a place….that you have rich and complex feelings about, a place where you feel, or did feel once, uniquely at home, which is to say a place where you feel you belong and that in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately …
My favorite lines in The Hobbit come at the very beginning of the story when Gandalf seeks out Bilbo and asks him to join him on an adventure: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone. I should think so–in these parts! …
I think we lose sight of the beauty, the most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming out from underneath things I didn’t know I could get out from underneath. You know, the moments I look back in my life, and think, those were the moments that made me — were …
In the seemingly endless grey days of a typical Portland winter I struggle with seasonal affective disorder and a few winters ago I began using this lamp to help me cope. Needless to say, when we moved to Alaska I packed it with an anxious eye toward the infamous short days ahead. In the heart of our …
Last weekend I snapped this picture with my phone and uploaded it to Facebook: “Awesome way to start the day.” It was 10:30 on a blue-sky Saturday morning in Anchorage, Alaska. While the boys skied with their jr nordic peers, David and I headed out on the trails ourselves. Indeed, it was an awesome way to start …
I saw a picture of a handsome curly-haired birthday boy on Facebook last week. When his Teacher-Mom took her maternity leave 10 years ago, I took my first teaching job – hired to teach her 4th grade class. I loved teaching. The challenges, the relationships, the creativity, the opportunities. My imagination easily skipped ahead and framed …