Posts by amandamagee

Fighting the Urge to Battle Time

Posted on August 15, 2018

The other day we were out shoe shopping, and as I gave Avery back a shoe that the clerk had brought out for her, I said, “Growing up is hard.” She laughed at me and raised an eyebrow, something I’ve never learned to do. I smiled sheepishly, “Obviously you are old enough and capable of loosening the laces, I just feel like it’s still my job. It isn’t.” “You can always do that for me if you want,” she said. I smiled back at her. “I know. Sometimes I will, but tomorrow you fly to Italy, and a week after you get back you start 7th grade. I need to grow up some.” She pulled herself over on the bench and squeezed me. I…

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Categories: Mama Sap

Nia Wilson, Heartbreak Train

Posted on July 25, 2018

This morning was hard. Exhale. The mundane and the tragic collided. My whole morning sprawled out before me in a complicated matrix that would get me to the train station. My mind and heart were heavy with thoughts of Nia Wilson and her beautiful, vibrant, just-barely-getting-started life being cut short by a man who didn’t give it a second thought. She was going somewhere and then she was gone. I clenched my teeth and wanted to bite my fist, turn back the clock. Make it fucking stop. How can she be dead? How can a sister have had to helplessly cradle her sister? How can the world keep going?     Oh, never mind, this is America. The ink and the buried articles about…

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Categories: Random

Share. Be Yourself.

Posted on July 15, 2018

We closed on the house on my birthday. I remember how Sean and I swam in the lake, diving down until our lungs burned and shooting back to the surface laughing. Inside, we ran our hands along the spiral staircase railing and watched the reflection of the sun off the water dancing across the ceiling. “It’s ours,” we said in shock. The house was a place in Vermont with a too dreamy-to-be-believed sleeping loft for the girls, multiple decks, and a waterfront that the girls could swim and kayak in, plus a woodstove and a firepit to feed my love of fire making year round.  It was less than 50 minutes from our house but felt like a world away. Our world. We’d been married ten…

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Categories: Random

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Why don’t we take a walk?

Posted on June 14, 2018

The other day I heard a ping on my phone. Sean had texted me a photo of Finley and me from a wedding. I immediately remembered the moment, she’d been invited to be a flower girl, but in the church, she was overwhelmed by the enormity of the event. I don’t mean by the people or even the grandeur of the church, it was her dawning that this was a significant life event. I held her in my arms and told her how much the bride loved her and how good she would do walking with the flowers. She kept saying, “I’m just a little afraid.” Since then I have carved out times to hold her when she isn’t scared and ways to be…

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Categories: Love

Writing For Good and For Myself

Posted on May 23, 2018

On Writing My writing, like many others things, gets wedged between parenting, working, and trying not to neglect my marriage. It takes a backseat to fretting, battling pet hair, and unsubscribing from email lists. Writing is and has always been, the activity that takes me to my best place. I wish I could understand why it is so routine to postpone what I know I need. When I write I become more than I am, stretching how I think and how I love, leaving me with what I can only describe as increased power. It can be like hand-to-hand combat as my fingers move across the keyboard and my mind halts them. I’ve gotten better at fighting my weaker self, overcoming doubt and climbing…

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Categories: Me

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