Magical Memoir Moments
My Dear God: How I Feel About Writing Another Book
Writing books is hard work. After writing, revising, publishing, and touring with a memoir, 2011-2014, I said I didn’t think I wanted to write another book. The only exception would be if I felt called again. When my friend Marilyn McEntyre asked if I would join her and others on a panel discussion at the…
“Have a Good Time with Your Friends:” A Granddaughter Milestone on the Brink
She’s two and a half and heading full speed toward three years old. She’s on the brink of everything. Just before Christmas, she helped put up lights and pine garland on her porch. She couldn’t stop saying her favorite new word: “energy!” By the time she arrived at our house for the Christmas holiday, Lydia…
New Year’s Resolutions 2020
Christmas came. Christmas was wonderful, overflowing with “energies” (granddaughter Lydia’s latest word). Christmas, and 2019, are now history. When the house gets quiet again, my spirit searches for poetry. “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” –Augustine of Hippo Here on this…
Your Grandparent Name: A Twenty-first Century Choice
What is one of the oldest jokes about becoming a grandparent? “I don’t mind being a grandma, but I’m not sure about sleeping with a grandpa!” Getting used to the role of grandparent takes time, but is a universal experience. Getting used to the name, these days, is much more culturally variable. Depending on how…
I See Iowa Politics Up Close, and Carol Chooses Her Candidate!
Remember my friend, Carol, who lives in Iowa? I wrote about her in June. We met online as memoir writers, presented together at Prairie Lights bookstore, and have stayed in touch by phone for several years. In June, Carol was still trying to decide who she will caucus for in February. Well, there’s news to…
Little Mystic, Great Mind: Splendor in the Grass
“[To the mystic] grass is really a forest and the grasshopper a dragon. Little things please great minds.” —G. K. Chesterton When little Lydia, almost two and a half, visited our house recently, she spent the first few minutes walking from room to room, noticing things she remembered from her last visit nearly a year…
The Harvest Comes For You and For Me
Here is a poem fragment I think of every fall. “Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen: reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in. This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always, for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting, after the…
So Much Fun: Making Collage Photos and Getting Chills
A few weeks ago everyone seemed to be playing with FaceApp, which aged faces of young people. You could see yourself in the future, say, fifty years from now. On our second honeymoon to Nova Scotia, we did the reverse. These collages were much fun to make. They were taken almost exactly fifty years…
The Three Most Important Words in Marriage: Fifty Years of Learning Together
It’s a family joke with us. We picked it up from a friend who asked, “What are the three most important words in marriage?” Our immediate response was “I love you.” We say those words to each other every day. We’ve been doing so for more than 50 years. But our friend said, “No, there…
Why We Installed Solar Panels: Old Age and the Triple Bottom Line
It makes no sense. We are not likely to recoup the money it takes to buy and install solar. We’re too old. But we did it anyway. Our next door neighbors went first. They were in their eighties! When I saw their solar panels going up, I remembered a proverb: A modern way of…