My Christmas cactus is in bloom. Pretty and pink on my kitchen windowsill, it is a spark of joy in the dark and early morning as I wait for the Keurig to do its very important work. I saw something that explained, based on the shape, the difference between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter cactuses. Maybe
I read Buechner first thing and, as usual, I’m enchanted with the way he dances with words. I’ll never be able to write like him, but that’s okay. I was never meant to. According to developmental psychologist Erik Erikson’s stages of human psychological developmental, I’m in late adulthood. I found it jarring, and somehow hard to
I spend a good part of the day on the sofa in the den, heating pad on high, surrounded by books. I can’t even muster the strength to go to the garden, so I send Gerry to water and harvest tomatoes and Swiss chard for supper. It feels like a wasted day. Countless things, indoors
Gerry returns from the sea with sufficient salmon to feed us for the coming year, and the sizzling heat of the past week gives way to a gentle rain. The silence of the past few days becomes the sound of living our ordinary days. I needed the solitude and silence and protected the boundaries I
Oh hi. I don't usually see you around here at this time of day. I'm not often here at this time of day (closing in on noon) but today isn't an ordinary day. I think I broke my foot last night. Well, maybe I didn't break it but I sure did something to it when
Today, another fit. Or maybe a start. I don’t know. I’ve kind of lost track. The other day the thought came unbidden: I’m looking forward to fall. I know. I’m aghast too. But this waiting and hoping, one day of sunshine followed by two more of gray, all the ups and downs and ins and
I spend all day working on a pivotal chapter in Presences of Absences, condensing a couple of pages into a single paragraph. Papa Hemingway advises us to write “hard and clear”. I spend hours trying to craft such a paragraph. I tweak and tweak again, rearranging words and sentences, and reading the thing out loud.