My childhood was spent in a haze of books and familial propriety. The small-town-America life, where children safely walked alone to school and dawdled their way home, lulled into daydreams by the sweetness of the neighbors’ gardens, is probably gone now, but the visuals are clear to me still. A wall of rambling roses at [ Read More ]
I’ve been thinking about my Father a lot this Holiday Season. Missing him… wishing he were here with me and Dakota to watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time. Papa was a rare bird. He laughed a lot and taught me useful things… how to hang storm windows… how to recite poetry with [ Read More ]
The ghosts of Christmas past Wandered by my tree just now A cup of tea in hand, I stopped To admire the sweetness of the nearly trimmed tree And there you were My Mommy and Daddy Young and shiny, hopeful as when On Christmas morning I’d open the presents You’d saved to buy.
I love the holidays with all my heart. I wait all year, anticipatory as a child, to be able to play Christmas carols without apologies. Truth is, from November through New Year’s, my life takes on an incandescence undreamed of in the rest of my work-a-day year. Music, decorations, lights, tinsel, a lifetime’s worth of [ Read More ]
I was blessed with a family of great and merry women, who were kind enough to live into their 90s (one to 105!) so I could enjoy their wisdom, laughter and strength for much of my life… and also learn how to make great pies! I know we can’t recreate the best of our past [ Read More ]
I had a conversation with my dear 93 year old Aunt Helen shortly before she died, about how good the old days really were. Memories of my grandmother’s home-baked bread, of family gatherings, home and hearth and love and laughter, cuddling us both in remembered grace, were like a feather comforter for the spirit. “Life [ Read More ]
When your worst nightmare comes to pass a second time, a bizarre numbness sets in to keep you alive. When my daughter Bronwyn died, six years after her sister’s death, I simply went underground and for two months did nothing but try to live through it. I couldn’t write or even talk about my loss, [ Read More ]
When my daughter died, I couldn’t find the strength to say the words aloud. Passed away, I could manage, as if she still hovered somewhere just outside my reach. Died was final and irrevocable and I simply could not say the word. The first few weeks after her death were a haze of grief. A [ Read More ]
My mother could foretell death. She’d inherited the family banshee, the Irish harbinger who shrieks her fatal message to one member of each generation to let them know that someone is about to die. “What a pity about John,” she might say, “he’ll be gone by June 15th,” and close family members knew enough not [ Read More ]
I had a vision, shortly after my daughter died, in which I saw her standing on a great plain of Light, through which a Golden Road traveled towards Infinity. She stood solemnly, awaiting a command to move on – with Dakota and me standing like sentinels, one on either side. She said we mustn’t set [ Read More ]