On Thursday nights, my middle child has ballet classes and my youngest heads to soccer. Her dad drives her, staying to watch, and the dog goes along for a walk. Which leaves me completely, deliciously, unbelievably alone for a full hour-and-a-half. It seems crazy that I am so thirsty for this sip of quiet. But IContinue reading “Being Your Best”
Category Archives: Everyday Essays
Grow Where You’re Planted
I am interviewing small business owners for a magazine story I’m working on. As I listen, I marvel at how each of them is saying the same words to me when I ask how they decided to keep their doors open in March when state regulations and customer fears and a completely unknowable virus swept throughContinue reading “Grow Where You’re Planted”
Our Kids Are Growing Up Faster in This, Our New World
It was a regular Thursday night. My youngest and I were boxing up beloved toys that she hadn’t touched in months. We were creating spaces for new projects sorely needed now that so much of our lives centered around home. Out of nowhere, my stomach began hurting. I felt hot and tingly. The thermometer confirmedContinue reading “Our Kids Are Growing Up Faster in This, Our New World”
Everyday Essays
Though I have written as a journalist for 30 years and dabbled in fiction and poetry off and on, I’ve only turned my attention to the craft of personal essays in the last few years. Below, find a collection of my essays, some published in magazines, on radio, and in online outlets, others created forContinue reading “Everyday Essays”
Opening Up to New Possibilities
It is just before sunset and ribbons of bright orange streak through low puffy clouds. I am walking on a foot bridge across the breathtaking James River in downtown Richmond, Va. Water courses over barely visible boulders. Mama duck paddles her babies to a stand of weeds to search for bugs. An osprey dips and glides overhead. AContinue reading “Opening Up to New Possibilities”
Learning to Listen
For Lent one year, I thought hard about what would be a true sacrifice I could make during the season between Ash Wednesday and Easter. I was a young mother at the time, staying home with my children. There were so few things that were even mine to give up. I was not eating in fancy restaurants orContinue reading “Learning to Listen”
Teens Gotta Talk … So I’m Letting Them School Me
Chillaxin’ at the dinner table with my husband, two teens and a tween goes something like this in these Corona Times: “Dude! These meatballs, though. They hit different.” “10 outta 10. Would eat again.” “Dopest dinner we’ve had all week, bruh.” And me, the English major, former newspaper copy editor and all around grammar policeContinue reading “Teens Gotta Talk … So I’m Letting Them School Me”
Behind Every Purchase, a Person
I was that early ’90s college kid who had the Think Global, Act Local bumper sticker haphazardly stuck to my dorm room door. Back then, it was a vague concept I was only beginning to grasp. Globalism itself was still early in its wide-reaching transformation of how we eat and shop and work. By the timeContinue reading “Behind Every Purchase, a Person”
An Attic’s Memories
This mom is itching to create a place to hold her family’s history I fondly remember the attic of my childhood. A set of wooden stairs led into a hot, cedar-smelling expanse. The steps were cluttered with cleaning supplies. I recall an ironing board hung on the wall. But once the risers dissolved into aContinue reading “An Attic’s Memories”
Losing the Need to Win
I can easily recall the disappointment on my sweet son’s face. We were perched, him and me, at a game table by the window at a state park in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a rainy day and our plans of wandering and fishing had been shifted to play and snacks inside the visitor’sContinue reading “Losing the Need to Win”