Motherhood

  • October

    October

    October is my favorite month; the light and leaves paint a picture I could look at forever. You step outside, and the whole world smells like a big cup of tea. Life though, is not so picturesque as the light and leaves, is it? Sometimes I struggle to write these posts because the photos and

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  • August

    August

    In August, summer yawns. The leaves are tired — as freckled by the sun as my daughter’s nose and cheeks. We ring summer out like a wet beach towel — squeezing as much from these final warm days as we can. We spend a day beside the ocean as a family. Hours are spent building

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  • July

    July

    Have you ever had a premonition or sense of foreboding about something yet to come? The summer of 2019 was one of the sweetest my family has ever had. Our kids were five and two years old, and we made so many good memories together that year. That July, we went camping in Vermont with

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  • June

    June

    June was mercy. Quiet days at home — slow mornings, sitting in the sunshine reading, noticing wildflowers, planting a belated garden for the kids, long walks with my husband. An endless stream of kids in and out of the door, sticky floors and dripping freeze pops, days spent in the backyard playing in the water

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  • April

    April

      April brought all the showers as promised; now we wait to see if May holds up her end of the deal with flowers. I’m sitting here looking out at more gray clouds while drinking my second cup of hot coffee for the morning. It’s cool and gloomy, but the bright green baby leaves are

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  • February

    February

    February brought us both glittering snow and promises of spring. The longer I live in New England, the more I look forward to the snow. I cheer with the kids when we wake up to a snow day and any excuse to stay home. The kids and I spent our snow days trying to figure

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  • Finding Joy

    Finding Joy

    Initially, my instructions were, “don’t fill your boots with water.” I say this to my daughter as she rolls a Tonka truck toward an irresistible puddle and eyes me — sizing up how much she’ll get away with. It’s cute, isn’t it, how I’ve been a mother for almost nine years, and I still think

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  • Dust & Sunshine

    Dust & Sunshine

    I run through rows of corn taller than my twelve-year-old frame. The fuzzy, prickly stalks pull at my arms and legs and, occasionally slice like a paper cut into my skin. Somewhere, deep within the tidy rows, a bare circle of ground hides like an accidental fort…that magical spot where the tractor turned around and

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  • Darkness & Light

    Darkness & Light

    I am up at 1:00 am to the sound of my daughter coughing. I find her stumbling, half-asleep toward my bedroom. She’s scooped into my arms and placed quietly back into bed. A hand to her forehead, then a thermometer. The fever pulsing through her body for nearly a week fights on. I stumble downstairs,

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  • Seasons Change

    I am not a minimalist. I sit pecking out words at a desk hemmed in by a hundred little shreds of paper attached to a hundred vivid memories. Pieces of my life, tethered to my heart, and taped to the wall to remind me of where I’ve been and of where I’m going. Pages ripped

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