My New Happy Place

They say that a scent has the ability to trigger a memory, to take you back to a time in the past, no matter how distant. A friend claims the mere scent of a pot of tomato sauce simmering on the stove reminds her of her Italian grandmother’s house. The logical part of my brain…

It’s become a pattern, an annoying part of my personality that follows me into middle age, whether I am conscious of it or not. Starting over. Every new year, the first of every month, every Monday and even just every morning I feel my brain saying it. A fresh start. A new day to be…

The boxes are down from the attic, stacked in haphazard fashion in the garage and waiting to be refilled. I am not ready. For seven weeks and three days, Christmas has filled this house. Santa, baby Jesus and all of their various snowmen and reindeer friends have been happily perched on shelves, hanging from the…

When I was a kid, Christmas was all about me. Starting each November, I would carefully turn down page corners in the huge Sears catalogue and circle my must-haves with a marker. Then I would carefully craft my annual letter to the portly man in the red suit, reminding him of all the good deeds…

The flag was the first thing I noticed. Half-staff and limp on this windless morning. Mourning as we all were, refusing to wave or stand tall. Driving into the staff parking lot, this familiar drive I have done countless times, my heart was in my throat. The kids were pouring into school, running to catch…

There wasn’t enough of it at first. Not for quite some time. Her father fretted about it just a bit. His baby girl had hardly any hair. Granted, nobody ever questioned her gender. Her searing blue eyes matched her brother’s but her features were all girl. By the time she was two-years-old or so, I…

They mock me from the closet…from the low shelf, hidden under an old pair of flip-flops and a sweater that’s missing a button. The pair of Miss Me jeans with the bespangled back pockets (that is totally a word). I bought them a few months ago, in a fit of enthusiasm that I had scored…

I am still filled with the magic of that night last May. The evening of the Listen to Your Mother Show in San Francisco. The night fourteen of us took the stage, opened our hearts, took a deep breath and spoke. We told tales of our own mothers and tales of our own journey through motherhood….

He says I still have that new bride smell. That man I exchanged ”I do’s” with twenty-five years ago this week…the man I promised to love and to cherish, to honor and cook for, and to continue to laugh at his potty humor until death do us part. Twenty-five. Wow. In that amount of time, people…

Nobody warns the mothers about the time. Those hours and days that seem like they will never end. The errands, the preschool drop-offs, outgrown shoes, skinned knees, play-dates, mac and cheese, playground woes, spilled milk, bad haircuts, and kindergarten projects made of beans and glitter. The hormones, driving lessons, AP tests, cramming for finals, outgrown…

I’m not quite sure when it started to become so obvious to me. Obvious that my little girl isn’t so little anymore. Was it how her body seemed to stretch overnight, and I found myself almost eye-to-eye with her now? Maybe the slight eye-roll when I said something a bit too uncool? The swing of her…

It’s happening in my house again. Another kid is moving on. And while this time it’s only promoting to high school, in my bones I can feel a shift. My babies are growing up. And I am so very proud. My daughter will stand proud this evening in her promotion robe, along with her bestest…

Words have eluded me for an entire week now… Trying to find the words to describe the incredible experience that is Listen to Your Mother. For those who know me in real life, to think that words would elude me is laughable. But this experience that I had, that the fourteen of us had, cannot…

I love magazines. Love, love them. I’m not sure what it is exactly that I love the most…is it the vibrant images, the short tidbits of information, or maybe the way you just feel like the writers are talking just to you? All of that. I subscribe to about 10 a few magazines that I…

Why hello, lovely blog…how nice to see you again. I have missed leaving my words over here, but I’ve been up to something. A little project. Something I can’t quite tell you about just yet…but it involves playing around with words in a different way, and I love it. So much so that I actually…