Fight Song

It's taking everything in me not to pack my bags and head to my daughter’s college, where a shooting has locked down the campus through the night. She answers my desperate texts with one- and two- word responses, just enough to honor a pre-agreed communications protocol left over from the teen years. She does not …

Selfie

The woods are the way I remember--not like they've been waiting 30 years for me to come back, but close. Still and yellow, falling light sharded between the trees that line the paved path winding along a forest stream. Mom and I, on a glorious fall afternoon, are on a quest to find an old …

Child’s Pose

Weekend in New England. The trip is now a tradition that started with my father. He was diagnosed after Labor Day one fall, after a long spring and summer of tests and doctors and waiting on results. I don’t recall whether we saw him that summer or not, or if it went by as they …

It Could Always Be Worse

I came across this tale "remade" after a Yiddish fable I used to read to the kids when they were little. One of my favorites in terms of teaching resilience and perspective, I tried to point to the faith at the deep center of our strength here at the nut--er, Burk House. We are all …

Hanging On

"Ingenuity at Work" Fall 2020 It's not that different, seeing her little room at the end of the hall. It's still tidy, and tastefully decorated—bed made, pillows in place—with enough whimsy and trappings of the girl who lives lived here to make you think she's just stepped out. But if you stand in the doorway …

Taste Test

I didn't even know my oven had a "356" degrees. Turn out it does. That's the conversion temp for the 180 degrees C that our exchange student needs to create his masterpiece, as tonight he plays the French chef. We've been to the grocery store, he and I, we've discussed the menu, we've been bien …

Dot Watch

In two days, she is 17 hours, 47 minutes and 1,193 miles from home. In a car she's owned less than two weeks. On a trip aptly named "Grand Canyon or bust." Not exactly the terminology that sits well with a mother's heart, but this is what I'm trying to tell you: not much sitting …

Disappointment Island

It's a real place. We looked it up after a student calls it out as a possible destination for their year-end project. My 6th graders are just launched on a "fun mini project." Ooh, the eye rolls I received, to be assigning "real work" the last two weeks of school. What's the big deal? You …

Ellis Island, Part 2

It is the first morning in 81 just like it that I don't look forward to the messages on WhatsApp. For three months, first thing upon waking, I have been greeted by pictures and texts from travelling girl. She's in Viarregio and here are some pics...She and the girls are touring Venice and here's a …

The Host of Rome

As much as I could not wrap my brain around trip planning last fall, it quickly overtakes me. Ellie is home until the second week of February, the winter is long and cold. Bill and Will go back to school, my long term sub-job is light years away and Ellie is right here, in the …