I’ve had Mary Oliver’s The Uses of Sorrow rolling around in my head lately. Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. If you’re anything like me, you’ve had one or two pivotal sorrows that have changed the course of…
Through sparkling shards of amethyst and translucent rose petals I remember. An A-frame cabin in the snow, woolen knee socks and a window covered in frost. An agate slice wrapped in tissue from my father. A brush of rouge on my cheeks from my mother after I’d eagerly watched her adorn her own face. Driving…
A handful of years ago, some teacher friends invited me out for dinner and drinks and a little Christmas shopping. I drug my feet. Not because I didn’t like the group, but I felt particularly alone at this time of the year and the thought of wandering around the crowded town center under twinkling lights…
The senses are born to savor. Awake and link to memory all that you are taking in. Flavors : The perfect citrus jems; the meal salted, plated, warm; the scrumptious offering of garden fresh snap, the sizzling simmer saucing; the sweet! Your eyes close in pure delight. Flaky, croissant crust sugared and warm, fresh out of…
“I believe that consumerism is stealing our money, our time, our resources, and even our identities,” said writer and speaker Sarah Bessey on her blog. “We all have too much stuff. We aren’t living simply. We over-spend until we are in debt and distracted.” And yet “loving our stuff has gone a bit off popularity…
“The Indians are the Italians of Asia…It can be said, certainly, with equal justice, that the Italians are the Indians of Europe…There is so much Italian in the Indians, and so much Indian in the Italians. They are both people of the Madonna – they demand a goddess, even if the religion does not provide…
My father’s brother is dying right now. I would say my uncle, but I don’t know him well and the title feels like a claim I’m not sure I’m entitled to make. When I was a child, we visited my dad’s family in upstate New York each summer. I would swim with my cousins in…
The following is an excerpt from JULES AND THE DJINNI MASTER, a middle grade fantasy novel by J.M. Roddy. From J.M. Roddy: This scene happens about midway through the novel. Jules, a fourteen-year-old boy, joins the members of a secret community hidden in the mountains in a world where animals talk. This scene came about from…
“Every shining pine needle, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters.…
I almost didn’t take the part-time nanny job. I’m sure I had my reasons, though it’s hard to remember the details now, all these years later. I went for the interview mainly because a friend of my best friend had recommended me, and I felt obligated to show up. I practiced my “thank you, but…
I recently traveled to Europe for a conference and somehow in the midst of attending my brother and sister-in-law’s beautiful week-long Hindu/Jewish wedding, planning my daughter’s second birthday party, and preparing for the trip itself, I managed to get everything ready, packed, and zipped-up one hour before I had to leave for the airport. That…
I go into the dressing room with blousey shirts and leggings, chosen for how they highlight my assets and disguise my liabilities. But this one makes my chest look too big, this one’s sleeves are cut at the widest section of my arm, and this one shows the bulges at my waistline. I hand them…
I have a crush on Prufrock. T.S. Eliot’s character. I have no idea why his poem is called a love song. It’s not about love. It screams Odysseus lost at sea waiting to be torn from the mast by his own longings. I don’t know why I like him. He’s moody, older, scuffed and stumbling.…
I’ve always had perfect vision, and I don’t say that to brag. It was a source of great frustration when I was growing up. I was terribly jealous of the kids in school with glasses, and I desperately wanted my own. Every birthday and every Christmas I would write ‘Eye exam’ at the top of…
“If there were a choice– and he suspected there was– a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.” –Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy When I was five,…
Kindred 