Patience! (and other directives from Concussionville)

Tamp down your fear and don’t speed your daughter those many hours from the soccer tournament to the ER (you will end up waiting for over two hours to be seen anyway). Don’t listen to the nurse you call on the drive, the one who tells you not to feed your daughter before she’s been…

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happy (late) mother’s day!

Our weekend was full of gardening and get-togethers and lots of youth soccer. (And Sunday morning fresh berries and a latte in bed along with home-made cards and crafts and lots of sweet hugs from my girls.) It was a perfect day, even with the cold and rain on the soccer field sidelines. I hope…

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seven!

I will spare you a medical update this week to instead write about my sweet Zoë, who is seven years old today. Last night she snuggled into my lap on the couch and said, “Can you believe I’ve been alive for seven years?” “Only seven years!” I said. “I can’t imagine a time you weren’t…

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things I love

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day! My day started like this:   Breakfast in bed with fresh berries, a decaf latte, homemade cards and gifts, and a new–gorgeous–orchid for my collection. It was a lazy day, with a trip to the park, lounging on a picnic blanket, reading, chatting with friends, and…

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joy

Every Labor Day at my mom’s cabin, we unhinge the ladder from the dock, pull the boats from the water, and say goodbye to the lake—the lake I love, the lake the girls love—and I feel that familiar swell of melancholy as I realize another year has gone by. In the last two weeks I’ve…

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first day

Yesterday, I took Zoë to get her hair cut. She grimaced as the stylist combed through her tangled, matted red hair (she hates to brush it or have anyone else brush it). But then her hair was free of snarls, and I watched as chunks fell around her shoulders and slid to the floor. It was…

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in the clouds

My favorite day of travel is the day I return home. Even the excitement I feel heading out on a trip—to a writing conference, to a workshop—can’t be beat by the day I get to go home, to D, to my girls. When I arrived in New York on Wednesday, I was filled with melancholy—my…

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first comes love

My brilliant friend Diane sent me an email a few weeks ago saying that I had to see her friend Nina Davenport’s new documentary, First Comes Love. I do everything Diane says because, as I said, she’s brilliant. So emails were sent, introductions were made, and a week later I was holding a copy of…

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hunkering down

Friday’s tragedy in Newtown continues to reverberate through our lives, our families, our communities. From my tiny office I stare out the window at the gray skies and the dirty snow, and feel the weight of that tremendous loss, of all of those young lives obliterated. I turn to my computer when I can stand…

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daughters, a dog and a book

I’ve been quiet here lately, and I’m sorry about that. Life is extremely full right now. (And for some reason—barometric pressure?—I’ve been so exhausted that I haven’t been able to get myself out of bed when my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. (I reset it or snooze it forever, which I’m sure is incredibly…

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