Being a Parent Must Be Awesome…
My "awesome" Mother's Day present this year "Being a parent must be awesome," says my 13-year-old son, eyeing me from the upper bunk as I wake him up in time [...]
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May, 2014
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Apr, 2014
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Apr, 2014
When Guests Come…
...you clean up. It's really one of the great benefits of having overnight guests or even just throwing a party: Suddenly you're compelled to tackle all those "construction sites" around [...]
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Mar, 2014
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Feb, 2014
Word of the Year
I'm rather late sharing my word for the year 2014. Why so late? Back in November I already knew that "joy" would be the word for the coming year, [...]
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Dec, 2013
Cracking a Code: When You Finally Learn to Understand American Knitting and Crocheting Patterns
I did it! I taught myself how to read an American knitting pattern! It feels like I learned how to read, and it reminded me how powerfully enabling it is [...]
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Dec, 2013
12/12/13 – A Busy Day
My weekdays begin with coffee and Morning Pages; in the background are the iced-over windows of winter. I decided to make another time capsule of December 12, based on last [...]
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Dec, 2013
Learning to Make Do – When Your Oven Breaks on Thanksgiving Or the Water Main Breaks
We had a Thanksgiving without a turkey, and not by design. As I turned on the oven to bake the pies my daughter and I had so carefully put together, [...]
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Nov, 2013
Osage Oranges
Osage oranges are one autumn's delights for me. I never knew about them until my first residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts a few autumns ago. There, [...]
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Nov, 2013
Exploring an Abandoned Path
My son and I had the most thrilling adventure on Sunday: After shopping at Bass Pro Shop for his upcoming science fair project, we stopped by a park down the [...]
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Sep, 2013
A Perfect September Day in the Indiana Countryside
Oh how I feel like myself again this morning, readying photos for this post! Feels good. Finally, I am blogging again. And blogging, despite its airy quality, is amazingly [...]
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Mar, 2013
On Belonging to a Group
How could you not feel elegant under this chandelier? Ballroom of the Woman's Athletic Club of Chicago, where the concert was held. Lately I've been thinking a lot about [...]
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Jan, 2013
What’s Left of a Friendship
In my current quest to get stuff done around the house, I hung up this crystal again. For years it hung in the southern sun porch window, and the [...]
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Dec, 2012
A Childhood Window Recreated
Recently, as I was rewriting a chapter from my memoir into the essay Giving Up Christmas that was published in Tablet Magazine, I leafed through a photo album of [...]
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Dec, 2012
12/12/12 – Time Capsule of a Quiet Day
Inspired by Xanthe Berkeley's challenge on Shuttersisters to create a time capsule of 12/12/12, I decided to capture this ordinary day so that sometime in the future, maybe 20 years [...]
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Sep, 2012
A Plant as a Companion
Our asparagus fern Prickly rules the sunporch. The other day I was reading E.B. White's One Man's Meat again. In the particular essay I happened upon, he was talking [...]
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Jun, 2011
Writing Letters to my Children
Now that my kids are all away at camp, I’m doing an odd thing: I’m writing them letters. It’s an unfamiliar thing. It feels awkward to recount my daily [...]