I recently took an afternoon and fled the red glitter, lego pieces underfoot, and cookie crumbs that have permeated every corner of my home, the detritus of a happy holiday with my large wonderful family. I escaped to the public library. I found a lovely table all my own facing a window and spent a few hours thinking, praying, reading, writing, and contemplating my calendar. I had found a little notebook no one had scribbled […]
My house looks like a big party went down, the blessing of lots of family members willing to come and stay awhile. But all good things do come to an end, and this is it. And someone gets to put things to rights, and that is mostly me. This morning, the first morning after everyone has left, there is tired Christmas deco, some of it just barely hanging on, fragrant pine needles that seem to […]
Waiting is a skill that you learn through practice. Perhaps there are some people who are naturally good at it, naturally patient, but most aren’t. There is probably no group of people on the planet less likely to be good at waiting than Americans. We are programmed early on to fill every possible moment with stimulation, and reduce to a bare minimum anything we can term “waste of time.” Produce, create, entertain, achieve, at […]
Sunset at Land’s End, San Francisco Because now I know that I’ve been […]
Crowding my coveted kitchen counter space are two seasonal candles, a headless nutcracker that needs mending, a doll’s dish full of random game pieces and dice, two cans of snow that we are afraid to reconstitute since a protective covering is mentioned in the instructions, a large stack of unopened mail and two small stocking gifts which did not find their way upstairs to be packed by my 10-year-old granddaughter. The kids’ play area is covered […]
A handful of quietness 