The image of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany (cover photo) is a place of contemplation, a place of remembrance and warning. It is close to the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin. If you understand what it represents, it can be haunting. If not, it seems almost restful. Continue reading Remembering
I’ll try something new and sit back and enjoy the view. Because in this case, this IS my circus, and these ARE my monkeys, and they are a rollicking good time! Continue reading Imitation and Flattery
So, within a week of one another, both my 13yo and my 16yo have had their hearts broken. They process things very differently. My youngest is open with me. My older one is shut down. I want so much to help, but know I have to let them have their feelings. Their dad is great at giving them a laugh every now and then. And … Continue reading While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Do you listen intently to the words of songs your kids listen to – the stations, the kinds of music they like?
Continue reading They Don’t Want What We Want, by Asking Alexandra
Driving straight into a thick blanket of fog, I wondered about our world, the darkness and lack of visibility we are entering. I remembered the blizzard in the Little House on the Prairie books that hit suddenly while children were at the school-house. They formed a line with outstretched arms – trying to get all the children home in a storm of wild whiteness. Only … Continue reading Microcosm & Minutiae
My boys and I see pictures in the sky. We see big, bold, ridiculous, pictures sometimes, and we laugh and point. This is beginner imagination building that we have been doing since they were tiny. Now, they can create a story out of thin air. (The picture here looks a little like Olive Oil, from the Popeye cartoons, doesn’t it?) Some of my favorite spottings … Continue reading Imagining Pictures in the Clouds
I have read that teenagers’ brains want to learn through hunger, thirst, and desire.* This is not something they do on purpose to annoy us. They are chemically altered because of their age and the enormous amounts of growing going on in their brains. They are drawn to things that require everything of them. They are tugged by sacrifice and meaning. They do not even … Continue reading Brains on Fire
Another bad thing in a world of bad things. I have not become numb, that is not what has happened. I crumble with each new attack, with each new assault – foreign or domestic. And then I disconnect, and block out the media, and become absorbed in my kids’ interests and the activities we can do together to fill our world with joy. I didn’t take … Continue reading We could Hug More!
It seems I have been struggling under a delusion that if I could just get my house organized Once and For All, everything would stay put. But it is more insipid than that – there is a strand of Once and For All twirling all through my head. If I could nail down my belief structure Once and For All, if I could prove my … Continue reading Sugar Sweet
As we rounded out the year of 2015, the boys and I sat up late-ish to watch Inside Out.
Of course, I’m raising boys after growing up in an all-girl family. It’s like Life doesn’t actually ever want us to feel capable or like we know one iota of what we’re doing. So, I can’t tell you if the interior landscape of boys during the upheaval that is Junior High is anything like that of girls, but I can tell you that I identified with every single thing that movie showed us about how an emotional world can crumble overnight.
Continue reading “Pre-Pubescent Insanity”
This is not a reference I throw around lightly. This is something I have studied. I worked at the Anti-Defamation League in San Francisco when I was younger, helping maintain their library of groups they watched for hate crimes or atrocities in the making. Every day, researchers would hand me stacks of articles from periodicals around the world to chronicle and file. They kept records … Continue reading Horrifying Comparison of Adolescence
Being on the right side of the brain is a little like being on the Left Bank in Paris: relaxing while watching the passing show, listening to the music on the corner. It’s a place to sit around and tell stories and wonder about it all – and most important, to slow down. Call it crazy or lazy, this wisdom may be found only … Continue reading Right Brain, Left Bank and Parenting through Teenage Angst
It’s Tao Tuesday! As always, I will refer you back to the original page, Tao te Ching Daily, and her series, Tao Tuesday. There, you will find rich discussion and articles from every chapter of the Tao, spanning I think a couple of years. I’m just starting over here, and relishing the discipline of looking at these brief words and finding the wisdom and beauty … Continue reading Easy, Now, Grasshopper!
Today, while doing chores, I listened to a book on tape from the library called, “How the Universe got its Spots.” (This is a link to the Amazon book, because I couldn’t link to the book on tape for some reason.) The gifted young cosmologist Janna Levin sets out to determine the size of the universe, along the way providing an intimate look at the … Continue reading On Motherhood, Physics and Relativity
Reflections on The Tao te Ching – Chapter 1: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet … Continue reading Darkness within Darkness
