the mud

I remember my mother saying to the five of us when we were young, "You just walked right by!" Usually it was a pair of shoes someone was looking for, or a book, or a paper.  If we were looking for something in the fridge, she would say, "Look with both hands!"  Usually that was my brother looking for the ketchup or something, and he would just stand in front of the fridge waiting for the ketchup to appear from behind the milk instead of moving the milk!  Or looking for socks in the sock basket, that definitely takes two hands.  Now I find myself, and of course it's very cliche, saying the same things my mother said.   You can't find the barbecue sauce, Look with both hands!  You can't find your backpack, You just walked right by!  You can't find the keys, You just walked right by!  And sometimes the kids say this to me too - MOM, You just walked right by!  (I can never seem to find my shoes- I never outgrew that.)  It's funny in our...

Sometimes you want to get away and escape!  Just for fun, we can go shopping!  (I am not paid to advertise nor am I sponsoring any stores or products, I just felt like looking around for stuff I have seen or enjoyed... ) Here's a list of little surprises to help entertain you and help you entertain and enjoy the summer, whether you are headed to the beach or the mountains, to the swim club, or your own backyard:  (Trust me, I'm mostly just window shopping:)   Pineapple Matches  $5 - to light up (without those plastic torches) Blue Seaweed Wall Art  $36/4 - in case you have to stay inside one day Green Valley Kitchen Peach Feta Salad  $ - after you go peach picking! Aventurine  $298 - it's fun to have one new piece of jewelry Perfect Dress  $88 - I don't know where you couldn't wear this A Stay by a Lake  $300/night- we almost booked it for our trip to Indiana Foldin...

I recently facilitated a workshop on Mindfulness.  Mindfulness is the practice of cultivating the art of being present, breathing, living, thinking in the moment.  It also has a lot to do with being available to the people we are with at a given time in a given place. I have been a student of mindfulness for about 12 years. When I walked into the room where I was to present, the table around which we would sit was far away from the computer screen, almost across the room.  The director offered to move the table closer to the screen for me, but I said no. I wanted space for us to move and sit and be separated from the technology pieces of the workshop. It worked. We all had space to sit and breathe and write and move back and forth.  We also had space to sit together when we were practicing our meditations. When it was time to share we all naturally gravitated toward the center of the floor where we could see each other and be closer. It is important to be “in...

Last week I drove to Indiana to pick up our oldest from his first year at college.  While I was driving, my youngest son served as co-pilot, offering me snacks, navigating the Waze app, teaching me Spanish, and generally keeping me focused and entertained at the same time.  It was a long drive.  We broke up the 680 mile drive by first driving to Youngstown, Ohio.  We left mid-afternoon on Thursday, before rush hour hit.  We were traveling west, tracking the path of the sun set.  The further we drove, the lighter it seemed to be.  Even by 8:00 the sun set still seemed to be far off.  The sun beckoned us on, assuring us of safety and hope and making it feel that it hadn't been six hours of driving in the car.  We had a nice cozy bed waiting for us somewhere - we just didn't know where. Thankfully the sun lit most of our trip no matter what time it was. The next day we woke easily and drove the remaining 6 hours to South Bend.  We never cr...

About 8 years ago, we found ourselves outgrowing our house.  We had four little children and a little Cape Cod with a big family room.  I had prayed for that little house "with small white beds up the stairs" but the time had come for a change.  The three boys were in one room with two bunk beds, a single bed, and one dresser.  And they were getting bigger.  And their clothes and their stuff were getting bigger too.  We needed another room.  We hired an architect.  He showed us plans with everything we had asked for.  We sent them out to contractors.  But no one quite knew where to put the heating ducts.  What?  No heat in the new room?  So we found another house.  A perfect house with four bedrooms and lots of old amenities.  Linoleum walls in the bathroom.  A light with a red swirly plastic cover over the fireplace.  Metal cabinets in the kitchen, circa 1950.  We moved in.  We gradually made...

We are all searching for guarantees.  The guarantee on shipping from our website order, the guarantee on the newly-purchased mattress, the guarantee that when we wake up the electricity will still be on, the guarantee that the weather will get nicer soon, the guarantee that my car will still be parked where I left when I get back, the guarantee of a healthy pregnancy, the guarantee of an easy child.  All the things we expect at the beginning of the day to go our way, the meeting, the conference call, the sales pitch, the ruling, the game, the score.  I see people searching for schools, looking for a guarantee that the choices they make, the selection of this school over that school, will guarantee that their child will thrive, be successful, and maybe happy.  They want the guarantee.  They expect it when they walk in, as if they were going to a car wash, that the car will be perfectly cleaned when it comes out the other end.  As if kicking the tires will gu...

For several months now, I’ve been noticing a new word in my children’s lexicon.   Stop.   I can ask the simplest of questions and the only response I get is Stop.   If I ask one question too many, like “How was Physics?” the word that I hear is Stop.   It means I have crossed some invisible line of communication, some term of agreement we had that I can only ask two, maybe three, questions when the kids get in the car or we are sitting at dinner, or maybe at breakfast the morning after they have been out with friends.   “So what did you eat?”   “Stop.”      I even try to follow their lead.    My son will explain to me something about a car that he knows a lot about, but if I ask that extra question to show my interest, he looks at me sideways, and “Stop.”   It’s become a joke, because I can predict when it’s going to happen and we all laugh when I say, “Can I just ask one more question?”   Then they usually just walk...