I can barely open the door before it throws itself in my face, rattling against its frame. I rein in my voice like I’m working a pulley and talk to the door. “I said hurry and eat, brush, and go to bed. I’m leaving the house.” I can’t help flipping the pitch at the tail:… Read More War and Peace
I will blog this. Am I going to get likes? Yep. I’m gonna be famous.
His scream sucked me cold out of sleep. It had just turned midnight and as the dream evaporated, I did not know I would rest again only after dawn. My son had woken—yet again to spit thick, cloudy coughs into a waiting mountain of Kleenex. Tennyson cried, holding the ice pack down on his head,… Read More Where Beauty Dare Thrive
How many songs do you still know from high school? The old band – cooler than ice cream in its day – revs up the radio and you’re right back, lyrics sure after all these years. Which is why Holistic Boy learns a lot of things through music. He had the optional challenge of memorizing… Read More Exodus
“There are no two words in the English language more harmful than Good Job,” intones Fletcher, the monomaniacal music instructor in the film Whiplash. Isn’t good, after all, the enemy of the best? Fletcher’s psychopathic devices sucked me right into the vortex of the questions I ask as my son’s teacher. How much do I… Read More A Tiger’s Pursuit: Mastery
I caught crickets with the boy you would marry. “I’ll give you a quarter for the Queen,” I offered, and he dispensed the prize insects in glass Coke bottles. My cousins got to keep theirs on the fire escape but aghast at the sight of black crawlies in her home, Mom threw mine down the… Read More A Million Signatures of Friendship
Voices in my house can be loud lately. Or hushed. Both scare me. I like a happy medium. When my sister sits in the bathtub in the dark, she tells me she is reading. I am small, not stupid. No reading happens in the dark. And I sense pain coming off of her. At age… Read More Day of Magic
8 Years Old: Boy: Mom, if I marry a girl and then don’t like her anymore can I switch? Mom: *shake head* No, that’s why you must choose very carefully. Boy: Oh. *looking disappointed* ++++++++++++++++++++++ Boy: Mom, when do people get married? Mom: You can marry in your teens but most people do it in… Read More Women, Money, and Barbarians
Go on. Pinch me. You are so kidding me. The house is still but for the clicking of the keyboard. The men are on their first father-and-son overnighter in the mountains. I am home alone tonight. In case you don’t quite see it: over three years as a human milk bottle, I’ve also served up… Read More My First Time
A Holistic Journey 