Love Means Showing Up
“I thought this was supposed be like The Little Mermaid,” I whispered to my son. We were sitting in the audience at the play Once On This Island and it had taken a dark, sad turn. The big-hearted, generous-spirited heroine was dying right before our very eyes. It was nothing like the movie! “Not the
A week ago, my husband Bryan drove our son over twelve hours to his new apartment at the University of Michigan. The last morning he was in town, I woke up early to go hunt down a mattress pad for Caleb’s new bed. It was like I was sending him off to war or the
I knew a woman who taught English as a second language to adults and one of the hardest parts for her was explaining to her students what all of our quirky expressions meant. Her students always struggled to keep these idioms straight. My favorite example was the combination of “something smells fishy” and “that rings
When my big kids were in preschool, we lost power during a winter storm. We all gathered in the family room and built a fire. We had light from the windows; it wasn’t terrible. My four-year-old son Caleb was anxious, though, and kept asking a bunch of questions. I finally said to him, “Why don’t
This past week, I had to tell my African-American twins about the murder of George Floyd. I always want them to hear about these things from their parents—not from a classmate or accidentally through the news. I have some experience with this kind of conversation; I decided years ago that I wanted them to hear
This spring has been very loosey-goosey; this is my least favorite kind of season. I prefer a full calendar with a pretty clear sense of what I can expect around the corner. For a long time, I’ve been able to pull off this level of reliability and consistency. I’d put things on my family calendar
Whenever something new or unexpected happens in my life, it takes me a hot minute to catch up. I wish I were quicker on my feet, but I need time to regroup. Part of that regrouping is looking around and finding someone in a similar situation who appears to know what they are doing. This
I wish I knew how to better handle the kind of days that we have suddenly found ourselves in. For those of us with kids at home, it feels like an unexpected summer, but without any time to make travel plans or sign up for camps or join a pool. I fear it will be
I knew I was going to go horseback riding on a recent trip to Arizona, so I asked a friend who rides a lot for some advice. “Just don’t hold the reins too tight,” she said. “That’s a beginner’s mistake.” When you are on a huge animal and you are nervous and scared, loosening the
I spent last week in Chicago with my son, Caleb, who was auditioning for college musical theater programs. It’s probably more accurate to say that I spent the week with Caleb and about a thousand other drama kids all of whom were auditioning in the same hotels. They all came to the Chicago Unified auditions