Find Comfort and Inspiration 
E. E. Cummings wrote the perfect poem of love. It reaches right into your soul. My favorite line is, “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)” A heart within a heart is such a tender image. And then you consider the weight of the promise. To carry a heart inside
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With a long pony tail high on her head, a pressed white cotton coat and a clipboard. This is how I imagined Emma the other day. She is standing in a patient exam room, a full-fledged physician’s assistant, which is the career she is working toward. In this no-way scenario, I can’t talk to her
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When my children Matt and Emma were young, I read many articles about the value of family dinner. It saved lives, preventing drug abuse and reducing the likelihood of all kinds of social pathology. It even boosted IQs so I devoted myself to the ritual, using my Aunt Kay’s example. Just about every night, I
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Forgiveness was never top-of-mind when I thought about my mom. A list of childhood grievances sat on my heart for decades. Now I think about how hard it was to be a young, single mother with a mental illness. Rita did some extraordinary, hair-raising things when I was growing up, like throwing her boyfriend’s computer
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I’m in love with our foster puppy Maggie. This morning she was a toasty little bean bag in my lap. We sat in an upholstered rocker by a window, rocking and looking out at a tall magnolia and the milky sky. When she started to drift into sleep she tucked her head in the crook
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I’ve been fostering puppies for years, but I never had one like Maggie. I met her when she was nearly lifeless. In the lobby of the Atlanta Humane Society, I saw a vet tech turn the corner with a bag of bones dangling from her arms. It looked like a burn victim, red and blistered.
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I woke up this morning to a night sky and headed for my rocking chair on the porch. Stars and a sliver of the moon were still shining. Looking up I wondered why we readily make wishes upon stars and struggle to believe in ourselves. We are here in the flesh with all kinds of
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I am reading Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The book is all soul and inspiration. Anne wrote it at the beach, where she went alone to reflect on the pattern of her life. She writes about her affinity for freshly sharpened pencils. I know exactly how she felt. There are so many
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My Aunt Maureen died last month. After the eulogy, we were quiet. Some of us got hives, some got bone tired, some put their sadness in a box, storing it for another time. In my aunt’s home we returned to our safe routines, telling jokes, crazy-but-true family stories, and cleaning. We are really good at
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My Aunt Maureen died last month. We were planning on her living another year. The year turned into a week. I wrote her obituary asap. I wrote a eulogy with the same speed. When it was all over, I decided that obituaries and eulogies should be considered before someone dies. It sounds callous, but there
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