This is the cheeriest thing ever so I have to share. A few days of the week, I'm able to pick up the kids after school. It's sometimes challenging because they're often hungry and cranky. And because there are often hungry cranky high schoolers who also just got out of school nearby. So the other day I'm walking back to the car with P and S, who are, you guessed it, hungry and a little cranky. Walking on the sidewalk toward us are two high school boys, kind of big and wearing

I am reading Patti Smith's M Train, and it is Patti Smith just the way I love her, flexing her literary chops, her prose so fine and evocative, rhythmic like a train itself. I am not finished with it. But so far, she's mentioned talismans at least twice. And now it's in my head and I have an idea: to do what I did for so many years, which is to notice all the magic and miracles all around me all the time, the talismans that carry messages. Patti Smith, in her punk godmotherly

Though she was born at the end of October, our elder daughter decided to celebrate her birthday this year on November 1st. We spent the day at an amusement park with three of her friends. It was our first time there; we kept the paper map out and spent a lot of time walking back and forth along the same path, seeing new things as we went. November 1, in a way, turned out to be a great day to try something new to celebrate her new year. The start of this particular new month,

Yesterday, I picked up my kids from school. The air had warmed up since the morning, so I wasn't distracted by chill, like I often am by this time in the fall. There's a low metal fence along the edge of the playground where all the adults picking up children must stand; I took my usual place there. No matter how late I think I'm running, I'm always there before the children begin to stream out from the school buildings, before they make their ways across the playground, befo

It's been ONE OF THOSE WEEKS with the kids! God love 'em. Self-care stopped by the house, took one look, and backed away fast. So nope, I didn't do yoga or meditate or take healing walks (er, not that I usually do--another thing to get on!). It all sounded nice in theory, but, I am noticing, I wasn't living my best life (TM). Just kept plugging away and gritting my teeth. Hmm. Now that I write it out, that doesn't sound like a good long-term plan. A Facebook friend who read t