Yesterday afternoon, my WALK was asked to smile more. I was in my neighborhood, heading on foot to my son’s baseball game, when a car slowed as it approached me from behind, sidled up to the curb, and the driver called out to me through the passenger window he’d rolled down. “Excuse me, miss.” (I am 52 years old.) “I couldn’t help but notice you walk very fast.” He smiled. He was missing several teeth. He sat there, expectant, had…
My house smells like hyacinths. Leftovers from the flowers I bought to make a boutonniere and a corsage for my son and his girlfriend for their prom. Musky and sweet, the scent greets me when I walk towards the kitchen to make the coffee. The flowers they did not choose to wear are arranged in a vase across from where I sit in the stillness of this early Sunday morning. The only sound indoors is the hum of the refrigerator,…
Taking a morning round through a garden is one of the small, perfect pleasures in life. It is a ritual that feels more necessary than ever, this spring, as balm in a deeply pained world. Just last week, I began again to carry my coffee onto the back porch—mug warming my hands as I peered over the railings—and then to wander in search of tiny unfurling plants. It is still not quite warm enough in Minnesota to rake out the…
I wrote this in the summer, and then I held it close. I’m not sure why. Possibly because the thought of watching my first-born gear up to apply for colleges was a feeling of chapter-closing that I was unprepared to share. But I reread it today, and I realize that it is also a kind of chapter-opening. As we are all dealing with so much loss, we are also moving forward, sometimes imperceptibly. It’s important to sit with the bittersweet…
I love the phrase “Up North,” which, in Michigan and Minnesota, indicates not just a direction but an ethos. It is a place to go when you need to relax, to pay more attention to sunsets and lake water temperatures than email. For many, Up North is a ritual or habit — renting the same place Up North for the same week every summer, or owning a cabin Up North and retreating to it whenever possible. Up North is where…
I’m in week one of remote teaching and learning, after a two-week “break” during which faculty were frenetically retooling classes, and students were trying to figure out what to pack up and where to take it. My campus has been pretty spectacular about offering all kinds of support systems — from a food pantry and emergency grants for students to tenure clock pauses and revised (extremely humane) policies for faculty course evaluations to careful plans executed so as not to…
Nearly fourteen years ago, in the middle of the night, my daughter was born in a rush. She is not a person who rushes to things, it turns out, but she has a mind full of curiosity and delight, and so although I know that the mechanics of childbirth would surely give other explanations for why she came so quickly, I prefer to think her rush of arrival is simply of a piece with her eagerness about the world around…
