Two-Step Christmas
I love sitting in our dark living room with the Christmas tree as the only source of light, with the glow from the mix of small white and colored twinkle strands threaded through its fragrant Frasier Fir needles, both gently…
Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light
My father-in-law’s service this past Monday—just four days ago in this weirdly long week—was a gorgeous tribute to his life, both of all that was said and sung and of all the many who were gathered to speak and listen…
In One Calendar Year
One thing that fascinates me about families is what we construct for connections, the ways in which biology and choice act as through lines for creation and continuity. I look at the lucky wonder of R.’s and my three sons…
“Why shouldn’t they have it, if they want it?!”
Three beloved women spoke to me today of needing to follow last week’s Thanksgiving (over) indulgences and holiday sugar storm fronts with this week’s taking themselves in hand—intermittent fasting came up, bone broth, scales. What delighted me most was what…
Exercises of the Heart
I’ve been deeply aware lately of the flexing required of my mother/sister/daughter heart. As my life continues to accumulate annual holidays, it arranges them in comparison and contrast to each other, one November and December layering onto the others, the…
Life’s Arc on One Bench
On what should have been a very short subway ride yesterday morning from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the Dumbo area of Brooklyn with my friend and cohort member K., we stood in front of a seated elderly…
Where the Charming Things Are
Three years before Maurice Sendak published his own authored-and-illustrated now-classic children’s picture book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” he provided the line drawings for Ruth Krauss’ “Open House for Butterflies,” originally copyrighted in 1960. I found the reissued slim hardcover…
Native Habitats
If you asked me if I love to travel, I would probably respond with an automatic yes—but I don’t know how accurate that is anymore. When I was in college and scraped together the fare to fly to spend Christmas…
Just a Glimpse
On my more than hour-long walk yesterday along a windy ridge line of miles of sidewalk between vast suburban neighborhoods, I saw just one other pedestrian. I passed elementary school children exploring their live oak-shaded playground and middle schoolers with…
Grit and Polish
My maternal grandmother was a full-time working mother throughout her three children’s whole lives, from the time she graduated from high school until she retired from her pink-collar job (in a role that we would call now an administrative assistant…
Spanning the Divides
Two people’s stories have inspired me this week because of their persisting against the odds; their expanding the possibilities for all of us; their receiving recognition for their efforts and the quality of their productivity. Their work and their attitudes…
Girl Power Pep Talk from an Older Sister
A treasured friend reached out to me today with a reminder of her and her daughters’ visit to our home here in Austin six months ago. Both R. and I had a hard time getting our heads around the six…
This is Not Just About Marriage
I chose to read this book because of what I know and love about other work by Ann Patchett, and for what I thought I knew about its contents, given its title. But—this is not a memoir of a marriage,…
“I get by, with a little help from my friends.”
Maybe I jinxed myself by posting on July 2, “first day of vacation and goals achieved”—or maybe/probably it was just the incubation period of the BA.5 variant of COVID-19 that one of the many folks on the planes and in…
A Little Earthing, Maybe
I meant to let you know last week that I wasn’t planning to send a welcome to the weekend on Fridays as I usually do (or, you know, as I sometimes wait to do until Saturday) during July, because R.…
Civics
I’ve wrestled with writing this since I started yesterday, which was after the Supreme Court’s (insert any number of superlative and negative adjectives here _________) decision. Among other suggestions for access to inspiration and the construction of content, the writing…
Multi-Generational Mermaids
According to 23andMe, one of my nieces and I share 23.11% of our DNA along 45 segments; given the variety of ways that families form and ours has, I know that my granddaughter and I are about 0% biologically related.…
The Sky Above
After just a few years, it is possible to wear shoes out to the point of their not being fixable, even to a skilled repair person. Materials of the footwear collide with materials of the earth—its built and natural surfaces—enough…
Resilience
Talking about resilience can be tricky: It’s so much better when centered in the resilient others that one has observed and admires and then applied to oneself than it is as prescription for those who are suffering, which can devolve…
Lined Up
I spent most of yesterday at my desk in the corner of our home’s primary bedroom, reading interviews with people in Uvalde and opinion pieces about the overarching situation and recitations of statistics, memorizing the faces of the children we…
A Grandmother’s Story
If the protagonist of a story indicates its intended audience, then Glenn Halak’s children’s book A Grandmother’s Story (Green Tiger Press, 1992) is odd—and my finding it among the free books our local library was giving away in a shelf…
Breaking the Age Code
True confessions: I haven’t yet completed reading this book—Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live, by Becca Levy, PhD—but (more confessions), as with all books I read, I have already skimmed…
“Every single drop of it.”
In a slim volume of just 62 poems with cover art from her painter mother, Ada Limón manages to articulate the wonders of the world and voices—especially in three specific poems—the texture and flavor of issues at the core of…
“Time for a Little Something”
What constitutes the perfect food? There is, of course, no one answer nor even a short list, especially given the wide range of contexts—budget and availability, geography and culture, lifestyle and stage of life, hunger level and health needs—in which…
10,000 Hours
R. and I have lived on this cul de sac, in the house we’re in now, since November of 2015, the longest we’ve lived in one home since we married in July of 1990. One of the South Asian families…
No Words for This
A woman I have known and admired for years told me today that she has a rare and aggressive cancer, that she will soon receive surgery to remove it, that her body will be forever changed by this experience, both…
Art as Teacher
My mind today is almost entirely on tomorrow’s solidarity walk. (Please join us at noon, if you’d like—the details are in the post/email on March 5.) I first learned about the transformative power of art—both in the making and sharing…
Walking and Breathing
A reminder of the invitation to you—and everyone you want also to invite—to gather next Saturday, March 19, at noon, at the boat launch on the north shore of Lady Bird Lake, where we will engage in arts activism as…
Pilgrimage: Solidarity of Care
At noon on Saturday, March 19, 2022, I am going to walk the second installation of my Pilgrimage art series, “Pilgrimage: Solidarity of Care.” I am grateful to my Transart Institute cohort; our conversation yesterday relative to art and the current…
“Could Have”
As a response to grief, I understand the impulse for keening. But I’m much more likely to withdraw in silence, the pain caught in my throat, until conscious breathing loosens tears. I seek poets’ words to unmute and articulate my…
The Widening Gyre
I walked for two hours in the middle of the day today, and the temperature dropped about twenty degrees during the walk, as a dry north wind pushed the warmer, humid air southward and gathering clouds obscured the sun. I…
Black History Month MasterClass
February is Black History Month here in the U.S., and R. and I have been further learning from a 10-hour, 47-minute course divided into 54 lessons, “Black History, Black Freedom, and Black Love: Lessons from Influential Black Voices,” which MasterClass…
The Extended Mind—and Heart
Last weekend, I participated in the monthly intensive for my doctoral program. Zeerak Ahmed led a two-day workshop, “Critical Immaterial Art,” and she created the space and the assignments for each of us involved to produce art pieces outside our routine media.…
All Seven Letters
R. says that one of his happiest memories of time with his mother was when the two of them settled into a long Scrabble game on Sunday evenings throughout his last couple of years of high school. Both of them…
Learning through the Cracks
The thunder that woke me this morning sounded more like earth being dynamited—a deep rumble, followed by a throaty explosion, then the smack of catapulted rock hitting hard ground—than it did like sky being electrified. Even as I write this,…
A Nidra for You
As we move into these last few weeks of the holiday season and 2021 itself, my whole heart is full of a desire to offer you support and nurturing; tonight, I’m providing a free link to the last segment of…
Lines
A few weeks ago, I was out and about on errands, one of which required me to sit and wait near a long checkout line, in full and close eye contact with everyone who moved forward in the line, so…
Granola
There are many areas in my life in which I am reliable, consistent, compliant with the program; I floss every night, for example, without exception. When it comes to eating plans, though, I’m a bit more…flexible. As with, say, granola…
Cloud Cuckoo Land
One of my main requirements of the literary fiction I read is that I fall more deeply in love with life and have my own humanity expanded by the author’s text, especially the author’s perspective on the characters that populate…
Emergent Patterns
Nature offered up a rich supply of wonders during a walk earlier this week, among which was this enormous spider, its web spun downwind of a seeding bush—the seeds themselves the shape of spiders, designed to loft through the air,…
Hunting and Gathering
One of my superpowers is being able to make a reasonable (perhaps even enticing) meal from bits and scraps of random remainders, and I have been exercising the full range of these abilities for the past couple of weeks, putting…
Considerations of Care
Here’s encouragement for you this weekend, and permission (if you need that, and if I’m in any position to offer that to you in a way that’s meaningful) to balance and ground the windiness and headiness of this fall season—its…
Pilgrimage: Mother Line
I have never been so glad as I am today for how young my mother was when I was born. I conceived of the art project I am creating this week as having at its heart a conversion—years to miles—and my…
Elemental
From my perspective and experience, our lives are enmeshed and entwined with others’ lives, from those we love the most and live with the most closely, to those in widening circles of connectivity, finally to all of us residents on…
What We Carry
You know when the air on your four-mile walk feels cool(ish)—but you learn, when you return home and check, that the outside temperature is actually still 90 degrees—that you’ve maybe been living in Central Texas for a while and going…
New and Old
I’ve drafted and erased multiple versions of this post already, awash in a churning mixture of exhaustion, deep concern about loved ones, and self-criticism. Maybe soon I’ll be able to write about the first (thrilling! challenging!) day meeting my PhD…
“Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment.”
So, I have a mild synesthesia, where when I read aloud, my mouth fills with tastes and textures prompted by the writing. It’s not that the words convey for me the specific flavor of, say, Glazed Five-Spice Chicken (unless I’m…
Where We Were
You know that tomorrow is that day, 20 years since the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvanian attacks, and we’ve been reminded of them everywhere, all this week: the Story Corps voices resonating, attaching to our hearts; the endless images…
All the Directions of the Heart
When two of your adult children are dating people you have yet to meet in person but already love; when your adult children’s work and school commitments keep them from coming home to visit you; when they would still like…
Her Country; Her Words
An entry in the United Nation’s Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)’s Poetry for Peace Contest in the fall of 2011, from Sajia Alaha Ahrar, a young female Afghan poet and activist studying then in the U.S.—the longing in her voice…
