My firstborn is nine. She is simultaneously hanging on to little-girlhood and feeling the pull of tweendom. She wants to take goofy selfies with me, but she doesn’t want me to post them for the world to see. (I only do so with her permission.) We have sweet cuddles and meaningful conversations; we have unexplained tears and closed doors.

Some days I think, I am killing it at parenting!

Some days I think, Parenting is going to kill me! 

I’ve never been the mom of a 9-year-old before. All of her firsts are mine too.  Continue reading →

Maybe a month ago, I tossed a pair of knitting needles and a skein of colorful yarn into my Hobby Lobby shopping basket on a whim. It wasn’t for lack of needles or yarn—there’s a giant box of knitting supplies somewhere in our attic. But you know I’m not going up there.

I used to knit on my hourlong train ride in and out of Boston five days a week, what feels like a lifetime ago, before motherhood, before we moved back to Florida. I used to make washcloths and hats and headbands.

Now I’m trying to remember the last time I knit anything at all, but I can’t recall the last finished project. Maybe that’s why I stopped in the first place—I loved to flip through pattern books and leave sticky notes on all the recipes I wanted to try, but what I inevitably wound up with was a pile of items knitted a third of the way through.

And then there was a baby and a thousand-mile move, and somehow the needles and yarn never got unpacked.

I’m not sure what prompted this craft-store purchase—it’s not as though I’m in need of hobbies to fill the already crowded hours of the day. But something in me said, “Create.” And I shrugged and replied, “Okay.” Continue reading →

The rain this week just keeps on comin’.

Daisy, who at three-and-a-half describes most things in terms of “favorite” and “not my favorite,” prefers a clear blue sky.

Yesterday I reminded her of the ways rain is a gift: It helps the plants to grow, it gives people and animals water to drink, it makes puddles we can jump and splash in, it plays music for us on the porch roof. She looked at me skeptically in the rearview mirror and then returned her gaze to the streams running down her window.

“But rain is not my favorite.”

This typically leads to a conversation about thunder—also not her favorite. Continue reading →

Everything looks a little crooked around here post-Irma.

Mailboxes, fences, street signs, trees.

Yes, I’m writing about trees again already.

The sycamore across the street from my house is leaning toward us where it used to stand straight and tall, its roots beginning to pull up the sidewalk. I wouldn’t be surprised if by this time next month it’s a stump.

The thought hurts my heart a little; it’s one of the few trees around here that changes color with the seasons. Its leaves usually wind up strewn across our yard, to the girls’ delight (and mine—is there anything better than the sound of leaves crunching beneath my feet?). Continue reading →

This morning I walked through the preschool courtyard with its colorful flags waving in the breeze outside classroom doors and smiled at the little ones still clinging to their parents while moms and dads attempt to gently pry chubby fingers from their legs. (Preschoolers are surprisingly strong.)

It almost feels like fall, windy and overcast, and I like it.

The last classroom I pass on my way to the parking lot happens to be the same one I dropped my now-4th-grader at on mornings just like this five short and long years ago. Her pre-k teacher, still occupying that same classroom, pokes her head out and waves at me. We have a bond, whether she knows it or not.  Continue reading →

I watched a police officer stop his vehicle in the middle of an intersection near my house this morning, flip his lights on, and jump out of his SUV. My heart caught for a moment—what’s going on? But then I noticed the huge branch that had been lying in the road (Irma cleanup will be an ongoing process around here for a while). The officer grabbed it and tossed it out of the way of passing cars. He ran back to his vehicle, hopped in, and pulled out of the intersection. The light turned green, and traffic resumed.

It’s insignificant—it’s barely even a story. But I drove the rest of the way home wiping tears from my eyes.

Continue reading →

After Irma churned through Central Florida in the middle of the night nearly a month ago, the first thing I noticed about my backyard—aside from the fence, which was mostly on the ground—was that my beloved crepe myrtle had been stripped bare. The crepe is my favorite thing in our yard, because it’s huge—around 20 feet high and just as wide—and in the summer it explodes with magenta blooms.

When the storm came in September, the last of the season’s papery-thin flowers were just hanging on. It was a lost cause, I knew, with 80mph gusts on the way, but I didn’t expect to feel so glum at how pitiful my tree looked afterward, naked branches whipping around in the lingering winds.

Continue reading →