“WILL YOU SNUGGLE with me mommy?” my six-year-old daughter calls from her top bunk. “Me first!” says my four-year-old son from the bottom. My daughter always wants me to linger so I crawl into bed with my son. “Whaddya wanna talk about? Dinosaurs?” he asks, his small, strong arms wrapped around my neck. “You go…
Roman: “Mamma. I’m half-Indian, right?” Me: “That’s right, buddy.” Roman: “Well, when will I be whole-Indian?” ———- Like so many aspects of parenting, sometime the simplest questions are also the most complex. I am transported back to staring at tiny curls littering the tiled floor. My heart felt heavy, and I tried desperately to suppress tears…
“She needed a hero so she became one.” I’ve been teaching my students about heroes and hero stories. We talk about the literary criteria. A hero is someone set apart, often from birth. We identify with them. They have a code of honor that requires them to take action when other’s won’t or can’t, usually on…
BILLY COLLINS WROTE A POEM about seeking or searching, something about a gorilla he discovered while reading a book about architecture. It’s kind of about seeing details, finding something meaningful when you least expect it. I know I shouldn’t, but I see all of his poems like this, hidden deep metaphors below layers of sarcastically painted…
The fiery hue of the sunset exploded across the skyline like the remnants of a blazing volcano. I exhaled, closed my eyes for a second, and opened them just in time to see the stoplight turn green. With a renewed sense of calm, I pushed the gas pedal down just as a series of honks…
“The more civilized man becomes, the more he needs and craves a great background of forest wildness, to which he may return like a contrite prodigal from the husks of an artificial life.” —Ellen Burns Sherman This summer I did three backpacking trips in five weeks. I keep wondering what it is that propels me…
I smelled her before I saw her. A floral-fruity sweetness clouding the crisp morning. I looked up in time to see her path cross mine. Just long enough to see her finger the hem of her silk dress–a frock that belonged in a Free People catalog, not on an actual body in 48-degree weather. A…
I begin my mornings like a cat burglar. Before the alarm can even ring in our dark house, I turn it off, creeping down the hallway in long steps and slow shuffles to avoid the creaking hardwoods. I’ve found heel-then-toe is more effective than tip-toe, that the whole area around the dining room table is…
Well, you have to begin sometime. I think you’ll need practice in order for it to look real. I’m sorry to do this. I know you’ve been homeschooled and I bet this is your first kiss. Isn’t it? Yes, I nodded in disbelief at my beloved drama teacher. Homeschooling comes with some well-earned stereotyping for…
I was early on my first day of high school. My parents couldn’t drive me and the school district decided buses didn’t make sense when most of the students could drive themselves, so I took public transit. The city bus timetable got me to school forty minutes early. It was either that or twenty minutes late.…
I used to use beginnings as a clean slate, a chance to start fresh and set goals. New Year’s resolutions, a new school year, even the first day of the month would be an opportunity to get my ducks in a row and attempt some new routine, but every time I would inevitably fail almost…
“You belong. Strong people moved to this land, worked hard, and struggled so you could live, so you could belong.” Each summer my mother said this over the gravestones of her ancestors, honoring those who went before us, were buried deep under the land they loved, and left a legacy for us to live up…
Yesterday a homespun miracle happened: I cut our first artichoke. Artichoke plants take three years to bear fruit and the starts I put in the ground last April weren’t in good shape by this spring. One had died and the other was slug-eaten and sad looking. Another year, I told myself. If it lives. But…
Recently I met two young women farmers who are the granddaughters of farmers. Their own parents ‘escaped’ from farming with the idea that they were providing a better life for their children, but those children found their way back to their roots anyway. There is something deeply satisfying about cultivating the earth, planting seeds and…
I’m a native Seattleite. My roots are here, buried deep in this seaside soil. My quiet awkwardness fits in nicely in this land of isolation, where neighborhoods are spaced out and teetering on tips of dark green hills or buried under layers of evergreen branches. A place where water dominates the landscape, a city so…
Kindred 