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A potential shooter, curtains and my early morning habits disrupted
But as I reread the emergency alert, I wish for one half of one second that we had curtains. And I hesitate to even write that because Dr Marry will use that sentence against me for the rest of our lives together. But it's true.
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25 trips around the sun with my boy
Even in that moment, holding this tiniest, most perfect of little persons, my mom didn't say yes or no. It wasn't that all these people didn't have opinions, but every single one of them knew I was going to have to do this largely by myself; that answer had to come only from me. I looked down on little Quinn John, and I decided to be his mom.
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A season to remember
My beloved boy is home for a week. I haven’t seen him since Christmas. That’s not that unusual, except that Covid-19 and the fact that he lives in Los Angeles has added an extra layer of stress to him being so far away. I was overjoyed to lay eyes on him when we picked him up from the airport last week, to be sure. Having him home got me thinking about a piece I wrote the spring he graduated from high school–a year I was sure would lead to me shriveling up and dying the day I dropped him off at college in the fall. Clearly, that didn’t happen. In…
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Until my throat is raw
I have lived an incredibly privileged life, and I have never felt physically threatened by people who are tasked with keeping me safe.
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Maybe math does have all the answers
What is much more interesting to me now is to consider who I am today because of that terrible night, exactly 25 years ago.
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Sweet lemon aid
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2020 issue of Inspired Home magazine. As you read this, we’re either still in or have just come out of an unprecedented global pandemic. Think about that for a minute. What other event in our planet’s entire history has literally brought the entire world together and absolutely isolated everyone simultaneously? Not every country fought in either of the World Wars and, while there have been other isolating pandemics, we didn’t have the benefit of technology to connect to people anywhere on the planet like we do today. So, what has happened because of this pandemic? There’s been a run on, of all things,…
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My first mate on the journey
Last night, Dr. Marry and I attended the Jeremiah Program gala, Journey for Hope. Jeremiah’s mission is the idea that you solve poverty and inequity two generations at a time by housing, educating and taking care of young single moms and their children. It’s a mission near to my heart because in so many ways, one of my dearest friends and I created that model for ourselves, a lifetime ago. Twenty two years ago, I was a 24-year old with a 21-month old. I was becoming good friends with a younger-than-me (technically I, but that sounds so pretentious!)-woman, Natalie. Natalie was pregnant and living at home. I had just moved…
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Leave the shore behind
I went back to school when my son was 20 months old. The night before I was scheduled to start, I went over to my mom and step dad’s house. I was in a blind panic about going back to school. I felt like Quinn was too young to go to daycare, and I was sure that I was going to be ruining his life if I did this. Plus, I was going back to get an education licensure, and I knew I didn’t want to teach. But as a young single mom, I felt like my options were limited. My step dad’s opinion always mattered to me because, while…
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A day of loss, LEGO and (the start of) love
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was one of those late summer days that help you endure the brutal, long winters we have in North Dakota. The sky was Robin’s egg blue, the glorious clouds were like cotton balls glued on to construction paper and the sun was shining, reaching every nook and cranny of our apartment. I had survived taking my son to his first day of Kindergarten. And now we were three or so weeks into the ritual of school mornings. Eighteen years ago, Quinn and I were getting ready to walk to school. We were switching back and forth between Dragon Tails and Good Morning America. I had it on GMA…
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In the face of history
I am completely overwhelmed by the situation at the border of this country. I know I’m not alone in this feeling, but I can’t shake that by doing nothing, I am complicit in the atrocity that is this piece of another chapter of our history in the making. It’s easy to look back at other times and faceless, nameless people and judge them for allowing slavery, the systemic slaughter of Native Americans, the jailing of women suffragists and civil rights activists, the extermination of Jews and others during WWII, the forced internment of Japanese and German Americans, the horrific abuse of GLBTQ people and more to happen on their watch.…
