This past week my family traveled to Chicago. I never really know what to expect when I venture into a city that is wholly unfamiliar. In this space, I often muse about how much routine and predictability offer a cadence that I grip so tight I prevent myself from letting go. There is a comfort and certainty in staying in one place. It comes from a place where you internalize the curve of the road, the way one particular cactus [...]
Everyday life
The tears were unexpected. This morning I made my daughter’s last lunch of her first grade school year. As I zipped up her lunch box, in a whisper, I told my husband that on her next birthday she will be eight and later this year she will enter second grade. Everyday I realize how much she is turning into her own person. Her questions center on ideas outside herself. A few days ago she asked about Betsy Ross and the [...]
Where I come from originates from my mother, sister, and daughter. My mom is unassuming and quiet. When she laughs, it is memorable. She always encourages me to look for the best in others, especially when I find it difficult. She’s taught me the importance of adjusting to less and the power a homemade meal can carry. With my sister, there is an ease that feels natural. She knows and gets me. I’ve learned through her to laugh a little [...]
“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your [...]
An ordinary afternoon. Cloudless, the sun rays hit the window of my car. Climbing temperatures in the desert mean that spring is ending and that one hundred plus degree days are preparing for arrival. I picked up my little girl from school and headed to the grocery store to buy a few items for dinner. As I slammed my car door shut, I extended my arm and grabbed my daughter’s hand. We walked toward the grocery story and she spotted [...]
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” Henry David Thoreau The last few weeks my days are filled with thoughts of the future. Wrapped up in what will happen next, I sink into forgetting what is right now. An abundance exists in the moments as they are happening. Here is what I love about right now. Right now I love when my daughter tiptoes into my office and wraps her [...]
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded. Ralph Waldo Emerson This [...]
This weekend I felt scattered and pensive. This tension arose from some unexpected personal news and the residual feelings of what happened in Boston over the week. Every time I turned on the television these images kept playing like a scratched record on a turntable: news that one brother died in a gunfire battle, another brother alive, captured, but unable to talk, lying in the same hospital building as those who were victimized by him, and the face of Sean, the MIT [...]
The events in Boston this week left a lingering dull ache in my heart. When I learned of the Chinese parents who lost their only child, I settled into a deep sadness. I keep asking, why? I know there are no answers to these senseless acts of violence. I sit in silence. No words provide a balm to help soothe the restlessness and anxiety I feel over this week’s events. When I am in this state, I often look to [...]
In the last few days, the images of the Boston tragedy keep flipping on and off in my mind. I learned today that the victims that passed were young: an eight year old boy, a twenty-nine year old young woman, and a twenty-three year old Boston University graduate student. So young. With their entire lives ahead of them. Each one was waiting for a loved one to cross the finish line. The news of amputated limbs, blood splattered on the streets, [...]
