Speed Bump

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Reflections on Florence, Italy, circa 2001 Photo by  ja ma  on  Unsplash I am immediately struck by the sweet perfume of flowers, the pungent odor of the fish counter, a whiff of fresh bread. The blare of horns and rattle of buses on the street outside give way to a steady hum of voices, peppered with shouts from the fish monger and the distant whack of a knife striking wood. I gaze up at the cavernous roof of the Mercato Centrale, a clear blue sky visible through the glass and steel rafters. I’ve stepped inside the Florentine equivalent of a circus tent, with vendors and shoppers buzzing around the food and flower stalls, readying for the show. I stand transfixed by the rhythm of the market place. I begin walking slowly past tables piled high with green, orange and yellow peppers, vast varieties of tomatoes I don’t recognize, and citrus fruit in neon colors that look as if they could have been plucked from a tree that morning. I peer down into bins of olives ...

I’m with my Mom, sitting next to her in a crowded restaurant, and yet I feel alone. I should be warmed by her proximity, by my ability to put my arm around her shoulder and squeeze her towards me. I can swing my leg three inches to the left and our knees will bump together. But she is light years away. She is the earth and I am the moon. She is a falling star glimpsed out of the corner of my eye; I’m fervently making a wish upon that star, my mother the star. I'm in the middle of my life with an established career, strong marriage, and healthy and active children of my own. But my Mom's dementia has only made me realize how much I still need her. There are so many things I want to tell her, so many lessons she has yet to teach me. I think about my Mom's life and my own, the similarities and differences, the choices we both made. We've always been close, I thought I knew her well. But there are so many things I've never asked her, so much about her I don't k...

#TBT to a blog post from a few years ago that still rings true. I write my way through things that are troubling me, to gain perspective, and often because I simply feel compelled to put events into words. Writing is a reverse translation that helps me make sense of the world. I've been going through my old journals lately and I've found a story there I want to tell - a story that is pulling me out of bed and to my laptop every morning. I'm reliving my story as I write and it's wonderful and scary and makes me feel alive. _________________________________________________________________________________ I've kept a journal for as long as I can remember. I started writing down my thoughts from the time I was in grade school and kept journals through my mid-thirties. My writing changed when I started this blog. No one, not even me, would want to read the sort of drivel I wrote in my journal on a daily basis. Nonsense, ramblings, internal drama that I needed to wor...

#TBT to a journal entry** (in its rough form!) when I was living overseas and traveling in England to give a few research talks. The world was a scary and unknown place in the initial weeks post 9/11, irrevocably changed in a way we didn't yet understand. I was giving a talk at Oxford University and they put me up for the night in the coziest dorm room in a building straight out of a Harry Potter movie. Having just come from the busy streets of London, I couldn't wait to get outside for a quiet morning run in this magical place. Along the River Thames I found beauty and peace in a time of uncertainty and sorrow.  S eptember 17, 2001  Oxford, England A new morning in a new place...it is so peaceful and beautiful here. I slept like a rock in my room in the castle and woke to hear the sounds of birds - foreign and exotic, outside my tiny windows. The sun shone through the tops of the trees in a clear blue sky - beckoning me out from under warm blankets and into the crisp mor...

The house is quiet as the snow falls outside my window. The world is awash with white, hushed and still. Branches bend under the weight of the wet snow; there are no cars passing by on the street. Ryan took the kids sledding and Hazel is curled up and sleeping on the couch after a romp through the fresh snow. My Mom and Dad left yesterday for their annual month-long stay in California, just escaping the snow storm. It was this same weekend last year, the day after my parents left, that my brother’s house caught fire. It was just after midnight on Saturday night and my brother, sister-in-law and their three kids were all sleeping in their second floor bedrooms. The fire started in the basement. My sister-in-law woke to the scream of the smoke alarm in their bedroom. They opened the bedroom door to find smoke waist high in the upstairs hallway. After going half-way down the stairs and glimpsing flames through the floor grate in the kitchen, my brother ran back upstairs to get...

We made new memories last Saturday. Somehow we found a day when everyone could get together to make Christmas cookies. We were three generations in a place that has been my family's home for at least that long, and all was right in the world. Mom was having a good day and was energized with all of her family at home. KU won a big basketball game earlier in the day making everyone, especially my Dad, happy. The girls made cookies while the boys played basketball on an especially warm December afternoon. Our cookies weren't Pinterest-worthy, but they were delicious. Mom was much more interested in taking care of her newest granddaughter, 5 month-old Hartley Paige, than in helping decorate cookies. She lights up and is her happiest when around the baby. Hartley has this effect on all of us. Any hint of sadness gets snuffed out with her around. Baby smells, baby sounds, a touch of her soft skin, those big eyes smiling up at you - that's all a person needs to fill their...

I pull myself out of my warm bed and shuffle in the dark towards the kitchen to make a pot of coffee - a must before braving the frigid morning air to walk the puppy. Dim lights from a holiday wreath blink from the living room wall and I realize I forgot to turn the lights off the night before. The batteries that power the string of lights in the wreath are from last year, replacing them is on my to-do list. I decide I like the softer, muted effect on the lights and I’m not going to replace the batteries just yet. It’s December. That crazy time of year when my kids run on candy canes and sugar cookies, and each day they wake with the hope that an overnight snowfall will cancel school. They are 9 and 7 this year, old enough to know Santa isn’t real, but still wanting to believe. My son differentiates what he calls the “mall Santas” from the real thing - proving to me, and to himself, that he still believes. The season is filled with the promise of magic and the innocence of believing....

I give myself a B for today’s parenting. Breakfast was uneventful (if slightly less than nutritious), the dog was a bit less crazy than usual, lunches got made and we all got out the door with completed homework and full water bottles. Importantly, there were no tears and no yelling. Success. I try not to grade my parenting daily, but more often than not I end the day feeling inadequate. Some days I feel like an outright failure as a parent - days that begin with a hurried morning to get to an early meeting, a meeting where nothing gets accomplished and that I should have skipped. Days that start with forgotten lunches and misplaced library books lead to an evening where I’m late to drive the soccer carpool and dinner gets on the table at 8:45. Everyone is tired, some of us cry, some of us yell. No one goes to bed happy. But even on the days I give myself an F, I hug my kids before they go to school. I feed them a healthy dinner and tuck them into bed with a kiss. I ask them about ...

My grandparents' Christmas with Conniff record was my favorite thing about Christmas when I was a child. If they had other Christmas records, I definitely don't remember them. I only wanted to hear this one over and over again. My request to hear the record was never denied, even in the middle of Summer. Hearing the traditional Christmas songs channels everything good about Christmas for me. I used to listen to the CD when I was away from home in college, graduate school and across the pond. This record always transported me back home and put me in the holiday spirit. I don't remember one present my grandparents gave me for Christmas as a child. Not one. I'm sure there was a special doll or toy each year - they always tried hard to get my brother and sister and I just the right gifts. My grandparents did not have much money and I remember my grandmother used to put things on lay away (remember that?!) at the small department stor...

Thinking about and missing Roxie this time of year....The similarity of these two photos of Charlie and Izzy at almost the exact same age (about 8-10 months) with Roxie is amazing, but not surprising. She was the most patient of dogs and wonderful with the kids from the time they were born.

I would be remiss if I didn't include my valiant attempts at getting a Christmas card picture on this blog. I started early this year, knowing two kids would be more challenging than one. I am happy with the picture we used for the cards (none of these) but a few of these are cute, funny and perfectly imperfect.

Charlie's first Christmas. A must-have photo, right? We spent the long Thanksgiving weekend in pursuit of the perfect picture. You will see a similar trend, beginning with this cheery family photo....

I had the best, unexpected and unplanned Sunday with Charlie. Izzy had a busy social calendar (first grade girls do not mess around), Ryan was busy and Charlie and I found ourselves alone. What to do? Sundays are our catch-up days at home and our parental to-do list is usually long. I don't enjoy it, but it is the one day we go to the grocery store, do laundry, vacuum, run errands - all the stuff that has to get done around the house when both parents work all week. Most Sundays we encourage the kids to play outside, have a neighbor friend come over and basically entertain themselves. On Sundays, I say 'No' a lot. No, I don't have time to play. No, I can't throw the football. No, I can't play dolls or dress up. No, no, no. There just isn't enough time in the day, in the week, to get it all done. This Sunday I asked Charlie what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to make a saxophone! To back up a bit, Charlie's third grade class went on a field tri...

8 and 6. Those might just be the absolute perfect ages for Halloween. Costumes, candy, school parties, ‘booing’ friends, carving pumpkins, ghost stories – they love it all! I will admit that I loved coordinating the kids' costumes when they were little and they made for some pretty darn cute pictures. But when they were that little, Halloween was more about what I wanted and the kids didn't really get it. Now, I happily sacrifice the cute coordinating outfits in favor of them using their imaginations. I love seeing what costumes they come up with each year. And as long as I don't have to make it - anything is fair game! Trick-or-treating with little ones can be hard work, and one scary clown sighting can ruin the entire night. We're past the hard work/scare easily stage and in what might be the very best stage. My kids are so excited to go trick-or-treating this year - and they want to go with us, their parents! Another couple years and th...

This is one of my favorite Fall posts and Izzy's first trip to the Pumpkin Patch! Hey kids, what's with the expressions?  Better late than never. We made it to a pumpkin patch this weekend. The pumpkin pickings were a little slim, but so were the crowds so it all worked out. Combined with the beautiful weather on this late Saturday afternoon, we couldn't have asked for a lovelier day.

Family, time, love, work, friends, age, health, laughter, happiness, grief, life. These are just words - words that fail to convey the tangled web that is my thoughts these days. But that's how life is, sometimes words just aren't enough. And other times words are everything. Words can fall far short of conveying our thoughts, but there is also nothing more heart wrenching than words left unsaid. Finding the right words and putting them down can offer perspective, be restorative, and help process a life event.  I have a friend who wears a shirt that says "I ❤ words." It always makes me smile. I need to get one of those shirts! I love finding the right words and having them exist beyond my thoughts. I love to write and I miss doing it here. I don't know how many people actually read this blog in the past, but I'm always surprised when someone mentions it to me out of the blue - often someone I've never met. That happened to me yesterday a...

I stumbled across these images the other day and thought at first about how much these two amazing little people have changed. But then I realized how much they have stayed the same. Charlie has always been happiest on a court or a ball field with a bat or ball in his hands. Charlie's favorite parks were the ones with a tennis or basketball court nearby. I usually kept a bat and ball in the trunk of my car and on a nice day we would stop at a park on the way home from work. And from day one, Izzy has been content to go with the flow and follow along - she only needed her fingers and some space to explore. And as brothers do, they take their sisters things just because they can. Barely walking, not talking, and she could tell her brother what she wanted. My hat please! Not that he would listen... That look! I have seen this exact look a million times on my now almost 5-year-old girl. Another day, another empty court... Even if I forgot a bat ...