Posts from the “Love” Category

That Time We Chased the Dawn

Posted on January 15, 2016

I can’t remember if I ever shared the story of the time we bundled the girls up and ventured out in the wee-est hours of the morning to hike a mountain so that we could film dawn breaking over the summit for a video we were doing for work. Sounds totally reasonable and very what-could-possibly-go-wrong, right? Many unexpected things happened like the trail head being closed, one of the girls tripping and having one foot go into the nearly frozen water, or realizing that if we didn’t sprint we’d miss the dawn so we split up… While we didn’t plan for those particular challenges, I did have extra socks in my pack and Sean had a resolve and endurance that helped us cross the various obstacles.…

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Categories: Love

Is It Harder Being an Adult Than a Kid?

Posted on July 1, 2015

“So, is it hard? Do you want to cry when you put us on the bus?” her face was titled against the car window toward where the bus would eventually emerge. Her tone was mostly kidding, with the slightest, wistful undercurrent. I stared at her profile. Her pert nose exactly as it looked the day she was born more than 11 years earlier. Round cheeks and curly lashes framing eyes that are a mirror image of her dad’s. I’d braided her hair after a bath the night before. She had said to me in the bathroom that morning, “Should I keep my hair in the braid or take it out?”   “Keep it in, I think it looks beautiful with those little wisps coming…

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Categories: Love

A New Gauge

Posted on June 7, 2015

Saturday we took the girls to a day-long concert. I imagined that it would be an amazing, magical experience, and it was. The only thing is that the magic I’d been chasing didn’t happen until the absolute end of the day. The girls were over the moon at the prospect of seeing Sawyer Fredericks. Sean and I assumed he’d kick off the concert, not close it out.   It was a warm day and while I’d prepared us with granola bars and cash, there was so very much for which I had not. The volume, the smoking, the exhibitionists, the rule-breaking by others that I told the girls still wasn’t ok for them to do. Mostly they got it and soaked in all the…

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Categories: Love, Me

Right This Minute

Posted on May 28, 2015

The month of May has been a whirlwind, bookended by Finley’s birthday at the end of April and a flurry of deadlines at the end of May. I can’t quite come to terms with summer being so soon upon us.   I guess I thought I had more time to plan.   “Time to plan,” the universe laughs. Cancer diagnoses amid friends of mine, divorce, depression, all lined up next to images of new babies and themed parties, all of which remind me how very little hand we have in anything beyond finding wholeness in the moments we have.   Dutifully I start the day thinking: Today I won’t let myself get bogged down. Today I won’t try to do too much. Today I’ll let…

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Categories: Love

Out of My Control

Posted on January 25, 2015

Last summer we visited a farm in Yakima. There were goats and cows, geese, chickens, horses, ponies, bunnies and quail. The girls poked about completely undeterred by the smell or the heat. Finley picked up a quail egg that had dropped. She looked up at me, the egg cupped in her hands, “Fix it, mama. Help the little baby.”   Parenting is so much like that, parents further along the path know how many times they won’t be able to fix it, people on a farm know that life begins and ends every day. “Oh, sweetie, I can’t,” I said. The older brother of the boy she was standing with said, “Wanna eat it?” I flinched, Finley’s eyes grew wide, then she shrugged and said, “Not really,…

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Categories: Love