Last week the little boy had a meltdown. Apparently some neighborhood friends, the boys he spends all his outside playtime with, haven’t been the best friends lately. After a recent haircut, one of the boys said, “You look even dumber now.” And there have been other incidents that have caused him to feel sad and rejected, the worst of which is that no one sits with him on the bus. They all pair off and sit together, leaving my little boy alone. Continue reading “No Fair” →

I started running again last week. These blue sneakers helped, because I’m a big fan of putting them on every morning. Unfortunately, they aren’t enough to keep me from remembering every single day how much of a nonrunner I am. About twenty whole steps into it, I start asking myself when I can stop.

That’s when I make this mental shift and force myself to stop thinking about the end. Inside, I have to sit back into my discomfort and unwillingness, choose to feel it and keep feeling it, and embrace the NOW. There is only my feet, there is only my breath, there is only this cold air. There is just this step. There is now.

This was pretty much my approach to natural child birth. too. It worked for the first three, but not so much for the last one. I suppose it didn’t work then because I simply could not let myself go into the pain. I couldn’t come to terms with it, and all I wanted was for it to be over. Perhaps the pitocin had a little to do with that. Continue reading “Is It Over?” →

Maybe because words mean so much to me, silence means all the more. And maybe that is one reason animals mean so much to me—because they speak without words. In some ways, that makes them seem more trustworthy, and maybe, too, it means we listen more closely.

This dog fell asleep on the kitchen floor this morning while I was eating breakfast. He usually follows me from room to room, and I didn’t realize he hadn’t until I returned to the kitchen later and heard his breath, soft and rhythmic. My heart felt a twinge.

People often comment on how young he looks and seems, and they are right. But some moments reveal the underlying reality: he is twelve-and-a-half, and he is slowing down. Continue reading “Brave Heart” →