Saturday morning at Shrine Mont – mountain retreat center for our church family where we go every June, every Father’s Day weekend. Near thirty years. This being the year boy goes it alone. I’m up bird early, enjoying a coffee and the random, ungathered sounds of the morning. It’s still so cool for June, and so still I almost have the satisfaction of beating the day to its game. I am wondering if he’ll come… Continue reading

I struggled with this one. Right up until her heart broke I struggled with it. Much of it was written three springs ago, when you could practically hear the falling of shoes, the dashing of plans, the breaking of promises…and yet, the beautiful green and luminous spring…strangled by Covid. You could actually hear the heart break. Of all that could not be. My senior, un-seniored but not undone. It is the first half. The second… Continue reading

December 2022 Got my holiday FOMO in high gear again this year, feeling sad and torn over all the lovely holiday events and activities going on that we won’t attend. Too busy, too behind, too stressed, and too much dealing with the “extra-curricular” of life to enjoy the season. Facebook feeds it, of course, and of course I’m supposed to be wiser and more well-poised to prioritize and enjoy the deeper meaning, but I find… Continue reading

What was the play? I wanted to ask They went to see a play. A class field trip—is there anything more fun especially for college kids. What was the play they all went to see? Was it Madness on the Playground? Shooter at Large? Was it Play Dead, Little Girl or Christmas comes to Sandy Hook? There have been 42 school shootings this year alone, 126 killed or injured, 36 this fall 42 126 36… Continue reading

It’s taking everything in me not to pack my bags and head to my daughter’s college, where a shooting has locked down the campus through the night. She answers my desperate texts with one- and two- word responses, just enough to honor a pre-agreed communications protocol left over from the teen years. She does not want to talk. She does not want to brief me on developments or keep me “in the loop.” She wants… Continue reading

The woods are the way I remember—not like they’ve been waiting 30 years for me to come back, but close. Still and yellow, falling light sharded between the trees that line the paved path winding along a forest stream. Mom and I, on a glorious fall afternoon, are on a quest to find an old swimming hole and family gathering spot deep in the woods of our past. It gives texture and purpose (and argument)… Continue reading

Weekend in New England. The trip is now a tradition that started with my father. He was diagnosed after Labor Day one fall, after a long spring and summer of tests and doctors and waiting on results. I don’t recall whether we saw him that summer or not, or if it went by as they do, one long kid-activity poolside summertime blur, but I remember that phone call. It came on the first day of… Continue reading

I came across this tale “remade” after a Yiddish fable I used to read to the kids when they were little. One of my favorites in terms of teaching resilience and perspective, I tried to point to the faith at the deep center of our strength here at the nut–er, Burk House. We are all changed. May we carry these lessons forward and be grateful. It Could Always be Worse (with grateful acknowledgement to Margot… Continue reading

It’s not that different, seeing her little room at the end of the hall. It’s still tidy, and tastefully decorated—bed made, pillows in place—with enough whimsy and trappings of the girl who lives lived here to make you think she’s just stepped out. But if you stand in the doorway long enough there’s a stillness, a quiet, sleeping stillness that makes me know she is gone. Because it is Sophie’s, the room is freshly vac’ed,… Continue reading

I didn’t even know my oven had a “356” degrees. Turn out it does. That’s the conversion temp for the 180 degrees C that our exchange student needs to create his masterpiece, as tonight he plays the French chef. We’ve been to the grocery store, he and I, we’ve discussed the menu, we’ve been bien arrangés for this culinary endeavor: he with screen shots of the recipe his mother sent him, me ransacking cupboards for… Continue reading