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Swimming lessons did not go well last week. My daughter loved every moment of them until last week. She would skip around the locker room with freshly-toweled hair, pausing to say that she couldn’t wait till swimming again. But after weeks of kicking and paddling, the teacher decided they were ready to paddle by themselves. [...]
Spring’s here, finally. Winter stayed past its welcome, but the tree outside our house budded anyway, defying day after day of snow and gray skies. It’s not pretty yet, but the grass is greening and those buds are promises hanging from the branch, ready to pop. I open the windows even though it’s still cold. [...]
For S and T When I was growing up, I loved dandelions. My parents didn’t use chemicals on our yard, so as soon as the ground thawed and a couple spring rains came, dandelion weeds would pop up everywhere. I loved their sunny faces, their tiny lush petals, and [...]
It’s spring here, officially, although you wouldn’t know it from the twenty degree weather. A thin layer of snow covers everything like dust in an attic. Where the grass pops through, it’s brown and wilted. A season of plowing has left tire ruts in the ground along the driveways, a bent sapling, stray rocks [...]
Last week, my daughter brought home a coloring page from Sunday School. On the back, she’d written her name in crooked preschool letters. She’d flipped around the Ds to Bs, so her name was a different name entirely. Underneath, her teacher had written capital and lower case Bs and Ds, and then my daughter had [...]
My husband is traveling this week. We miss him, so as my daughter spins around the living room in her princess gown, I snap a photo and send it to him. He texts back: “So beautiful.” She changes from her gown to her footie pajamas and heads for the computer, asking if she can [...]
My daughter’s favorite coat is long and minky-soft, zebra print with a ruffle around the bottom. The inside is lined in hot pink. Last week she wore it with big white furry boots and a red boys’ snow hat that looked like a race car. She carried a fluffy white stuffed cat in her arms. [...]
It’s almost eleven pm. Already, my daughter has cried out at least four times. She has these nights infrequently – usually when she is getting sick or when she’s had a long day. We run in, and her eyes stay closed, her mouth drawn into a frown as she cries out. I kneel by her [...]
It’s summer. We do summers especially well here in the north, where snow may fall in October or May. Even early June sometimes keeps us in the occasional sweatshirt, so when summer really comes it’s like cracking an egg, sunshine and warmth running thick and golden across our town. I take the kids to the [...]
My 5K was a week and a half ago. I was not ready. I went anyway. Originally, I enlisted a running buddy and we developed a pretty straightforward plan: do an eight week training program, run the race at the end of it. Unfortunately, due to several different factors including crutches, crises and unexpected out-of-town [...]
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