I played cards with his parents. I sabotaged his daughter’s wedding. I lived with his sister. He called me on the phone. We talked about wars: the one he was born into and the one he volunteered for and the ones he started. Today, I struggle for words. Today is the day Earl Nash died. Memorial Day 2024. He was my uncle. He made hard choices: bad choices, good choices. Isn’t this the story of all our lives? He did…
January, You are the beginning, the brand new one, the fresh start. You are the reminder that He makes all things new. I can feel it, the turning over, the closing of doors. There are too many metaphors. January, I’ve seen you before. Yet, even you, He makes new. You are a revolving door, allowing us to walk through, to exit as we wish. You are a pausing, when the past and future coexist. You, January, I’ve greeted loudly with…
Before you read this, I want to be clear about one thing: I am not advocating that parents put their kids in bad situations, and I am not saying that we shouldn’t comfort our children when they are scared. What I am saying is that what you are about to read has been an unfolding story in my home. It is the story of breaking fear. … It started with a small voice. “I’m scared of the dark,” he said….
I made this exercise die for two reasons: 1.) I want to exercise more, but often I forget because I have four small children and am terrible at routines, so the time I have for exercise usually just passes. 2.) My kids love to move and I thought it would be great for homeschool breaks. I actually made this about a year ago, and it has held up pretty well. I had to reattach one side, and my kids have…
Every year, my husband and I get our children Christmas ornaments. Our goal is to somehow capture the year in an ornament so that over time we have a nice stack of memories when we decorate the tree. Sometimes this is really easy, like last year when we went to Willamsburg and let our children pick out their own ornaments from a store called “Christmas Mouse.” This year, I wanted to make our children’s ornaments, but I had a hard time…
There is nothing new under the sun. Oh, Ecclesiastes, how I love you. Just. People. Go read it. And read it again. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new…
I know you know this, but I am writing a novel. Big surprise: that’s what I”m writing about today. Once, at workshop in the West Virginia mountains, I heard Meredith Sue Willis say, that whatever your novel is, you should know it will change, and that you will change, too. She also said that novels are made out of scenes, and then words. Both are true in this case. Over the past 12 years this novel has been a short story, a…
Where to begin? A beginning. A starting over. Just fragments. Just brainstorms. Begin: to start, to come into being, to complete the first part of something. What if we are always beginning, and in that way, are never beginning? These are the kinds of things that roll through me this evening, when it is dark and quiet and a thunderstorm is coming softly. The fan in my room is circling its small space, affecting the whole room with soothing wind…
An acrostic poem is the kind of poem that looks like this: Piecing words together On paper like this Emits a certain Memory Well, that’s just the first thing that came to mind. Do you get what it is now, though? Acrostic is not often used as high literature, but it is a fun way to help kids write poetry. We use The Good and the Beautiful language arts, level 2. It’s good. It’s beautiful. It’s free. It’s absolutely sufficient…
Mornings are hard. I know I’ve written about this before. I’m not complaining (though, admittedly, I have complained about it in the past.) I’m simply stating it out of recognition. There is a difference between complaining and recognizing. Complaining says “Oh man, I am upset about the way this morning is going, and I’m going to choose to stay upset about it.” Recognizing says, “Mornings are hard.” Then, maybe, “How might they get better?” One way to make a hard thing…