the mud

January. The house empty again after college kids and grads returned to their life. After our house feeling so full it's a bummer to walk past the empty bedrooms, as cute as I may try to make them. COVID exhausted! Dreary days punctuated by snow, we like, and ice, we don't like. Empty tree stands and mantels and windows that once held greens and wreaths and light. Meals that feel like leftovers, but they're not? Short days and cold temperatures. Lack of exercise or motivation. No wonder we are tired and longing. I know we are all just muddling through this time. I'm trying to hang on. Here's what I've found that helps. I hope it helps you too. One thing I have after Christmas are full cabinets. So I'm making all those treats that I planned to make over winter break that were quickly outsourced to restaurants and bakeries. We ordered food and went to the bagel shop more times than I expected. I need to empty the cabinets now. The pumpkin breakfast muffin mix,...

The front porch, where 8 rockers are not enough to hold everyone, so people spill down the cascading front steps, leaning in to hear the conversation or to laugh even if they don't know what was said, is home. Cousins and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and moms and dads and grandparents, ages ranging from 18 months to 85 years. Across the street is the beach, hidden more these days by piles of dunes and sand that have been dredged up for protection. But you can still see the blue and blue - the hazy line of ocean meeting sky and you can imagine the waves because you can hear them, and the gulls. You can smell the salt in the air and it settles in you like sugar in a glass of ice tea. You can feel the ocean drumming like a heartbeat against the beach. Here is my home.  I don't live here all year, except perhaps in my mind. It becomes my vision board whenever I try to "picture something happy." Instead, we have rented the same house for nearly 50 years. It pr...

I need to be tucked in. I remember my mother tucking me into bed and I needed the sheets and blankets tucked in 'all the way around me.' It is funny now because my own kids didn't like to be tucked in that way. Annie would kick her way out of the tightest swaddle from the time she was four days old. I still like to feel tucked in. I wriggle my way into bed, with my side having perfect hospital corners, while his side is all a mess. I can turn just slightly so the blankets form an edge around me and I am tucked in. I even have an idea for a blanket edged in elastic so that when I'm on the couch I can have that feeling of being tucked in. Maybe that's already a thing. I wonder what makes me crave that Tucked In feeling now. Perhaps it is the craziness of the world that I want to cut myself off from, to create a barrier between me and the rest of the upheaval. I want to feel like I'm in a quiet oasis in the midst of the chaos. Months after 9/11, I remember hearing ...

 Quite a few years ago, we were on our way to the shore. We have been going to the same shore house for almost 50 years! It is not fancy or new but it's a big old Victorian that has room for literally everyone, no matter what. I've slept in every bedroom from the attic to the room called the chapel room. I can remember my brother sticking his wet finger in the outlet to see if he would get electrocuted. (He did get shocked.) I remember my freshly bathed and pajamaed sister climbing back into the full bathtub to play a little more.  I remember my cousin and I took a boat ride from some cute guys we had just met, from the bar back to our street. I remember my other cousin, a lifeguard, telling us which bars we should go to and which parties we shouldn't. I remember being a newlywed and going with my husband for the first time. I remember bringing each of my children down for their first time to see the ocean. Each time we go there we are filled and refilled with the love of t...

I've seen dark times before. Dark times in my career, where I said something to make myself look good when I should have just been listening. Dark times in my health or my children's health or my parents' health, where no one knew what the outcome would be. Dark times in my family, losing a brother. Dark times as a mother, where I thought the kids were making the wrong choices or choosing the wrong friends, and dark times in my marriage, where the situation didn't seem to have a solution. But this time is different. This time feels really dark! And there is no power company coming to turn the lights back on. And it's not just dark in our own homes, it's dark everywhere, some places more than others. We can't just find our way through this dark. We are feeling so much! We have to  feel our way through the dark. And so I am reaching for anything. I claw my way along, grabbing onto the next table-edge to pull myself up, just long enough to catch my breath bef...

Every June or July I usually visit the shops down the shore, usually while on vacation and stock up on birthday cards. I love browsing through the cards and finding the ones that make me laugh and will make the recipient laugh too. When I go with Annie, we usually end up having to leave because we make each other laugh so hard and call a little too much attention to ourselves. And some of those card stores are like libraries - you have to be quiet! I buy cards for a handful of people, my sister, my niece, my friend from college, my cousin, and a handful of my aunts - all the summer birthdays. I haven't bought a card for Aunt Doris for a few years now, as she is gone, but I know she's still with me. This year she gave me a very special gift... I know we are all quarantining. I know we can’t hang out with people. I know we aren’t doing all the things we love to do with each other. We are choosing where and when and with whom we spend our precious time. I have to confess that I ha...

Hydrangeas are one of my favorite things. I don't claim to be a good gardener, but when they are in full bloom, I'm so happy. We have three huge bushes of limelight, or maybe they are Annabelle, hydrangeas that have grown so well over the last nine years here. I bought them home from church one Easter, so maybe they are blessed, too? They bloom so nicely all summer and I can see them from the living room too, so it's nice indoors and out. I'm giving them away, there are so many! And the royal blue of neighbors' hydrangeas fills me with envy! (and I've seen a lot on my everyday walks!) I don't know what it is that reminds me of my childhood - that cool color of the sky in a flower - and that freshwater smell, although they don't smell as strong as they did when I was little. So this summer I decided to move two blue hydrangeas from the backyard to the front yard. I tested the soil and dug big holes and tried to make sure I had the right mix of compost and...