What do the trees demand? Absolutely nothing

On an unseasonably warm weekend, my husband and I “went to the trees” by hauling our little teardrop camper to a favorite state park. Situated on a bluff overlooking a lake, I read a book next to a crackling fire while geese honked to each other as they flew overhead. It’s that sweet spot between winter and spring when the temperature fluctuates throughout the day, making it necessary for casual but constant wardrobe changes: winter coat in the chilly early morning, then just a sweatshirt as the sun rises in the sky; for a brief window of time at lunch, I daringly sport short sleeves before a shiver goes through me. I think better of it and put the sweatshirt on again, but this time with the zipper open.

I love where I live — except for this part

It’s early morning, and I’m wondering if I can get away with wearing a flannel shirt to work. Thankfully, my job is behind the scenes at a public library, so I don’t have to adhere to a very strict dress code, but still…a plaid flannel shirt feels a little casual. On the other hand, I’m freezing. Decision made. Flannel wins.

Winter in the Midwest, where I’ve lived most of my life, is an exercise in survival and fortitude. The familiar “winter burrow,” when my neck and shoulders begin to melt into the rest of my body in order to conserve heat, begins in November. That’s when cold winds strip the trees of the remaining leaves and the world seems to be all shades of browns and grays. In December, there is some relief because of all the festive holiday lights and decorations. January settles into a cold, desolate winterscape once again. The lights and tinsel and baubles have been packed away, but a fresh layer of snow can brighten things up.

Watching my parents begin again

Whenever we walk into an Apple Store and belly up to the “Genius Bar,” I half expect all the Geniuses to greet us by name. Over the years, we’ve spent a lot of our hard-earned money over the years on Mac computers, iPads, and iPhones.

This time, I approached the Genius Bar with trepidation: I had been given the daunting task of picking out a computer to replace the old desktop my parents used for the past two decades; it was so old that it was no longer able to be updated; the keyboard and mouse were, on a good day, slightly functional at best. Despite their best efforts to keep it going, it was finally time to find a replacement.

When the flavor and the scenery are a package deal

I just returned from a trip to New Orleans, where my husband and I took in the local scenery, fabulous music, and of course…food. We ate our way through the city, gorging ourselves on all the fresh flavors of catfish, oysters, shrimp, jambalaya, red beans & rice, and gumbo.

“Oh, you must go to Cafe du Monde and have beignets!” said one person after another, almost word for word, which had me suspecting they were part of a mass marketing campaign aimed solely at me.

The Emily Post of snow removal

“Well, we are witnessing the downfall of society,” said my Gentleman Friend, as he kicked off his boots next to the front door and brushed snow out of his hair.

Sometimes I’m not sure if he’s being funny or overly dramatic. So I wait.

Everything old is new again

The universe is conspiring to tell me something, to impart some wise lesson to remind me what this season is supposed to be about.

I felt a twinge of it with the first snowfall of the season. I woke up to a beautiful wonderland blanketed with snow and something bubbled up inside me. Instead of checking the temperature and worrying about levels of antifreeze in my car, I poured a second cup of coffee, sat in my comfy chair, and swiveled to face my picture window. Everything was still and sparkling and bright, while I sat in jammies and slippers thinking how lucky we were to have a cozy house.

We knew this day would come, when we no longer lived with dependent children, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that we had no idea what that really entailed. We have both been hopelessly knocked off our game.

Happiness bender

My 24-year-old son lives in Chicago, working as a musician. One night after a gig, a woman drove up to him on the street, got out of the car and tearfully handed him a small bundle.

“I can’t take care of him,” said the woman, trembling. “Can you take him?”

My son looked at the bundle in his hands and saw two twitching ears, whiskers, and a pink nose. They belonged to a tiny kitten, mostly white with some orange striping on his tail and back.

Bird Launcher

This morning my husband calculated how many days we’ve spent as active parents, ever since our first child was born in 1996. The number is astounding: 10,531 days. For each of these days, my primary identity was “Mom.” Every waking moment was spent thinking about momming, or executing the tasks of momhood. It swept me up in a funnel cloud of carpools and parent-teacher conferences, youth group and birthday parties, moderating arguments and doling out band-aids for scraped knees. There were many unglamorous moments, but of course memory doesn’t work like that. I can already feel my memory distilling those 10,531 days down to reels of first giggles and piano recitals and the many Hallmark moments when my children were happy, hilarious, and oh-so adorable.

Summer’s Embarrassment of Riches

“That was a good meal,” he says, leaning back in the creaky wooden chair. He inhales carefully, as if his belly is so full that even breathing in could cause him to burst.

This is a hazy memory I have, from a scene in my childhood. I can’t remember if it was a church potluck or around the family Thanksgiving table, but for some reason, that sigh of contentment, that feeling of attempting to straighten the abdomen by stretching like a wooden board, completing the isosceles triangle with the dining chair, sticks in my mind. I still hear the unbuckling of the belt, only loosening it a bit to allow the food to digest and settle. The way, after a good meal, the conversation slows until a comfortable silence takes over. This is especially true at a meal that offers an embarrassment of riches, so much food that you can’t bear to say no to any of it and now you’ve stuffed yourself so full you can hardly speak.

Driving under a paper moon

Age 5: I let him sit in the driver’s seat. He could barely see over the steering wheel, and he made car sounds while he steered hard to the left, then banked hard to the right. He turned every knob on the radio dial, flipped on the turn signal, and startled himself when he turned on the windshield wipers. I snapped a picture of him that day, his smile as big as the moon.

Shame stood up and took a bow

For a few days, the Coldplay Jumbotron incident captured the spotlight in the headlines, much like the couple captured on camera encircled in each other’s arms, rocking blissfully back and forth to the smooth (and to some, romantic) crooning of frontman Chris Martin.

In the Before, they were like any typical couple, enjoying date night on warm July evening at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Father of the groom

Our oldest son is getting married! He and his beautiful girlfriend announced to us earlier this month that they will be getting hitched in late October. We suspected they would tie the knot at some point, but for the past few years, they didn’t seem in any rush. This proved to be a challenge for my husband and me, Gen X-ers who were married at ages 21 and 22. More than a few times we’ve kicked each other under the table when one of us was about to ask, “So, are you two ever going to get married?”

“Stay cool,” we’d mouth to each other behind our water glasses. “Relax — It’s none of our business.”

Embracing my inner Mrs. Roper

I saw it hanging on a hanger at the store. I’d only gone in to grab a bottle of shampoo, but somehow I meandered aimlessly through housewares, then electronics, and finally women’s clothing. Before me hung a caftan, a flowy, flowery, dress that set off the sound of harps in my head. It was so fabulous, so indulgent, so … not me. I was pulled to it like a moth to flame.

Where time stands still

Our recent trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was a rare just-the-two-of-us vacation that I expect will become more common, as our adult children are establishing their own lives and their own traditions. So off we went, my Gentleman Friend and I, with our trusty teardrop camper in tow up to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore near Munising, Michigan.

Our campsite turned out to be mere steps from the shore of Lake Superior, and if it weren’t for the 40-degree temps, I would’ve been tempted to wade into the crystalline blues and greens of the water. Instead, we sat as close as we could to the frigid waves that lapped the shore, reading, napping, and occasionally commenting on cloud formations or seagull antics.

Faces in the crowd

I’ve written before about the singing group I’m in, a 60-voice choir that sings mostly classical literature. This choir has become “my thing” the past several years, as I emerge from my mommy cocoon and start to spread my wings as a woman with adult children. This choir has given me my voice back, in more ways than one.

Tuesday night rehearsals have become a sacred space for me. During these evenings, nothing else gets scheduled, and I often trudge into rehearsal still carrying the burdens from the day. As I climb the steps to the second-floor choir room, the day’s headlines swirl around in my head, bumping into family worries, missed deadlines, and things I wish I hadn’t said. But as soon as 7 p.m. hits, our director plays a full chord on the piano and we begin our vocal warmups. For the next two and a half hours, my entire focus is on deep breaths, reading notes, and counting rests.

A season of lasts

The graduation gown is hanging in the closet, patiently waiting for its one day in the sun. In a few days, my youngest child will walk across the stage and officially end her years in school. As she receives her diploma, she will be tipping the scales, closing a chapter and beginning a new one.

The scale tips for me, too. I’m far removed from my season of firsts: First apartment, first home, first pet, first job. From now on, there will still be firsts, but they will slow considerably. From now on, I will have to seek out new experiences intentionally, because they will no longer be coming at me like water from a firehose.

The shed was built for dreaming

The little shed in my backyard was built for me, back when “She Sheds” were featured in magazines and Pinterest boards. I wanted to give it a cute name, something that made it sound like a sprawling estate instead of an 80 square-foot shed kit we bought from Costco. I played around with calling it “Daisy Hill” or “Western Prairie,” but none of those stuck; ultimately it settled into its unassuming identity as “The Writing Shed” or “The Thinking Hut.”

I don’t spend a lot of time out there during the coldest winter months. It’s not too great spending time in there when it’s blisteringly hot, either.

Hot to go: the kind of coffee shops this world needs

The Mom & Pop coffee and tea shop is where it’s at, if you want my opinion.

Maybe the song is right: What the world needs now / is love, sweet love. Love is wonderful. I’m a huge fan of love. But hear me out: Love can be complicated and fraught. Love can bring us together, then turn right around and tear us apart. There’s a song about love for almost any situation, and they’re not all good.

Who you gonna call?

The phone rang in the middle of the night and jolted us awake.

Okay, it wasn’t really the middle of the night — but it was late, considering that my husband and I have recently decided that, unlike Cinderella’s carriage, which returns to its original pumpkin state at midnight, we turn into pumpkins much earlier, somewhere between 8:30 and 9.

Out of habit, because bedtime was always such a ritual when the kids were little: bath, jammies, teeth, story, my husband and I have developed our own routine, and even our own vernacular concerning the end of the day.

300,000 decisions

My parents, still enjoying good health and living independently in their 90s, are sorting through their belongings in their home of nearly 40 years as they prepare to downsize to an apartment.

It is a big job, and my sister and brother-in-law are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, by virtue of them living nearby. In their spare moments, of which they have very few, they go to Mom & Dad’s house and pick up boxes to take to the donation center. They offer moral support. The job of sifting through a lifetime of belongings is not only physically strenuous, but each unopened box holds the potential of releasing a flood of memories, good or bad: a letter from a long-gone relative; Mother’s Day cards on brittle paper with “I love yous” scrawled in crayon; a serving bowl that brings back a long-forgotten detail from their wedding day.

Less house, more home

It was 2015, we were in the middle of a pay freeze, and our life was generally chaotic with four little kids, a floppy-eared puppy, and a house that always seemed to need fixing. Toys were everywhere, our savings account was barely worth mentioning, and we hadn’t taken a decent vacation in years.

There were nights I couldn’t sleep, worrying how we would pay for school fees and music lessons and clothing for our children. Something had to change.

Ten years ago next month, we made a big change: we moved into a house half the size of our previous home.

Struggle, struggle, struggle … click

It’s not that I enjoy watching my kids struggle — I really don’t. All the motherly instinct in me wants to run in, sweep them up in my arms, and rescue them from pain, frustration, embarrassment, or fear. But I learned a long time ago that you can’t wrap your children in bubble wrap; the more we hover around them and try to catch them before they fall, the less likely they’ll know how to get up again by themselves.

When does confidence kick in?

Exactly how long does one have to be doing something to start feeling confident and competent at it?

Forgive me if I’m getting all “what is life” on y’all, but I recently had a big milestone birthday, and as the old Steve Miller Band lyrics say, “Time keeps on slipping … into the future.” The past few months have me taking inventory. What are the things I’ve accomplished? Which life goals need to be pushed to the front of the line? Which goals are probably going to fall by the wayside? Who am I, besides a daughter, wife, and mother?

The good, the bad, and the art of conversation

It’s hard to effectively describe what makes a good conversation; what’s easy is to identify when you’re in the middle of a bad conversation. You are acutely aware of it, and you’re desperately trying to save it. When all else fails, you want nothing more than to escape it. It’s boring, frustrating, making you uncomfortable, or even worse, making you angry.

The year of the wood snake

My 2025 word of the year came to me without me having to search for it. My coworker mentioned offhandedly that, according to the lunar calendar, 2025 is the year of the wood snake.

“It fits with all kinds of metaphors,” she told me. “A snake sheds its skin, it lives close to the earth, things like that.”

An audience of one

I’m handling my heart with kid gloves this season. I’m typically a newshound, but for the past month or so, I’m choosing my news carefully. TV news is completely off the table for now, and I’m being selective with print news, too. This won’t go on forever, but for right now, my heart is too raw, too tender to take on the pain and hurt of the entire world. I’m giving myself a break.

Proudly Serving the Community of
Sun City in Huntley

Life in Focus