Last Saturday when I headed out for my morning walk, I noticed there was a jingling in my pocket. Of course I reached into the pocket, and there, accompanying the house key, I found two acorns. Two very tiny, bitty little acorns, collected I don’t know when by my daughter, collected because they were of … More Collector
I got a card in the mail today. Actually, I received several, which was wonderful, as we (people) don’t seem to send much in the way of snail-mail these days. They were birthday cards, mostly, because tomorrow is mine. But the card I’m writing about here– the card I am quoting– isn’t a birthday card. … More Card
So I was at Duke University, enjoying my bi-monthly visit with my professor and discovering, to my Very Real Relief, that the latest excerpt of my Master’s thesis, sent to him last night, is Not Awful. We had a great conversation, and as we sat there grinning over Thomas Mann’s text and profound genius, I … More Adventures in the Library
Just in case you wondered, this is what writing my thesis looks like. This: after a full day and a half of reading and writing and reading some more. I left it like this when I went to bed at 11:30 on Saturday night, and– lo and behold!– it was waiting for me on Sunday … More Writing
We haven’t had rain here in Durham in a long time. A Long Time. We forget what it sounds like; we forget what it looks like. We are restricted on watering our lawns; we are restricted on washing our cars. We think twice about running the dishwasher. I have parked a pitcher under the bathtub … More The Bright Side
It could have been lonely. This morning I awoke for the second day in a row in an empty house. And by empty I mean without Bill. Without children. Without cat…. Just me, and the three fish in their little tank with the noisy filter– the fish with their three-second memory and no attention paid … More Day
On the evenings when we are less busy than we are other on evenings, I read aloud to my children. Currently we are reading a delightful book: Peter Pan in Scarlet. It is a new book (2006), and William received it for a gift and then read it last year, often laughing out loud as … More Reading for Pleasure
Dinnertime. Everett has the floor. He’s telling us about a Very Bad Thing that happened to him today. (Emma Grace has something to say. We ask her please not to interrupt.) It would seem that some of Everett’s friends were called a name today, and that this name was a Bad Word. This, of course, … More Youngest
E-mail is a good thing. I really like it. It’s so much more casual than a phone call, so much less obligatory than a lunch-date. It’s a simple, quick way to keep in touch with people. But it has a horrible way of backing up on me. Perhaps you know what I mean? Perhaps you, … More Clean Slate
I went to Sunday school today. I think the last time I attended a Sunday school class– as a student, not as an assistant or a teacher– was in April. It was nice, for a change, to Not have to have all the answers, or even Most of them. It was nice to be sitting … More Faith and Doubt
