My sweet Claire, today is your birthday. You are eleven. This one seems different than the others, somehow. You are so much older and wiser, so much more aware of the world around you. Maybe it’s how all 11-year-olds are. But something makes me think you have just a bit more insight than many kids […]
Month: March 2020
It’s Not Something You Can Catch
I was at a party a while back and I met a group of single people. The host introduced me to them after I mentioned the difficulty of meeting people outside my circle of (mostly married) friends. Everyone was kind (though no one shook hands, because even though it was February, we were still being […]
Sore Throat
I woke up with a sore throat this morning.* I’m writing this at 5:30 in the morning. A few minutes ago, I woke up with a slight headache and a sore throat. It’s the kind of thing that I would have totally dismissed a month ago. I would have pulled myself together, taken an Advil, […]
This Is Not a Referendum
I cannot do 5th grade math. I’m not saying this to be dramatic. I simply don’t understand it. I never have, so the role of helping Claire with her math homework fell to my dad when he was here. But now that he’s gone, she just has me. And now that school has been cancelled, […]
Front Lines
My sister Lindsay is an ER nurse. And let me just state the obvious: Right now is not an easy time to be an ER nurse. The other day, she called as she was leaving work, clearly exhausted. She lives on the West Coast and works the night shift, so we usually talk when it’s […]
Be Still. Listen.
Every night, my dad reads to my boys. I’m not sure when this routine began. I know that for a long time after Shawn died, I was an active participant in bedtime for Austin and Tommy. Sometimes I read to them, or I laid on their beds as I watched them fall asleep. But slowly, […]