“Mom! Look at me!” Learning To Focus On My Child’s Face
For the past few months, I've noticed that my almost four-year-old daughter, Miss A, has a floating eye. It usually only happens when she’s tired or so into a story—where expressive hand motions abound—that she has trouble focusing on my
The Power of Music
Monday morning, fresh from the shower, I opened the vintage music box I’d gotten for Christmas and took out my earrings, then turned the little dial so the music would play. Miss A, my almost four-year-old, watched from her perch
How My Daughter’s Greatest Challenge Became a Gift
My firstborn didn’t smile for months after she was born. She didn’t laugh or interact. But she was very aware of her environment—watching, with somber brown eyes, everyone who crossed her path. Because of this visual and auditory stimulation,
Can’t See The Pine Cones For The Logged Trees
Covered with an awning to protect her from the unseasonably warm sun, my three-year-old sat inside the stroller like a mini Queen of Sheba. She wanted to know what the yellow thing was in the field (a combine) or the
A Lesson From Tolling Bells
I was in the park with my daughters this week when the courthouse bells chimed, announcing that it was twelve o’ clock. My heart constricted with a strange longing, and though I at first had no idea why, I soon
A Gift, Restored
It started out, as in all things in this present age, with a YouTube video. I was folding a pile of whites when my husband beckoned me over to his computer and said, “I’d like to do this one day.” A
Garden Therapy
The couple who previously owned our farm—she was a weaver, he was a musician and accordion repairman—were very artistic in the layout of their flower beds, so now it’s nearly impossible for me to distinguish perennials from weeds. This, combined with
Stepping Into The Wind
And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And
The Velveteen Mama ~ The Complicated Gift of Becoming Real
Over these past three years since my daughter’s birth, I have been in the process of becoming real. Like Velveteen Mama real. I am sure you know the premise of The Velveteen Rabbit, either from having read the story yourself or from
The Compost Jar of The Mind
I was sitting in a patch of sunlight warming the kitchen table—pumping milk, listening to classical music on Pandora, and reading an article about being a kind mama. Garbanzo beans were cooking on the stove that I was later going