I usually post about Oregon history during the last week of the month, but this week I am feeling the pause between years. The week between Christmas and New Year’s has always felt to me like time to heave a big sigh and relax, to sit in the moment suspended […]
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Perfect Christmases
When I think of my childhood Christmases, I think of going to my grandparents’ home in Klamath Falls, Oregon. They moved out of that house when I was six or seven, and some of my earliest Christmases were spent at my home rather than traveling to my grandparents’ house. So […]
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The Brass Bucket: A Family Heirloom
Ever since I have known him (46 years now), my husband has kept his magazines in a brass bucket. This bucket was something he acquired from his great-aunt. Why she had it, I do not know. She lived on a farm for many years, a farm that has been in […]
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My Gratitude Journal This Thanksgiving
I’ve written before about the journal I have kept for the past twenty years. About two years ago, sometime after the pandemic started, I decided to add a paragraph each day listing things I was grateful for. I’d read about the healing powers of keeping a gratitude journal, and this […]
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A Story That’s Fun To Tell: My Mother and the Ballard Locks
When my parents lived in Bellevue, Washington, in the 1980s, they owned a small cabin cruiser. I don’t recall much about the boat, and I never went out in it. They mostly sailed on Lake Washington, but occasionally, then took it into Puget Sound and up into the San Juan […]
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Teaching My Kids to Drive
I wrote recently about my own experience learning to drive. I don’t remember that being a contentious time with my father, though starting to drive a manual transmission took a bit of doing. But teaching my kids to drive? That was harrowing. My son, poor kid, as the oldest, had […]
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My Middlebury Trash Can
When I moved onto campus at Middlebury College in the fall of 1973, I shipped a trunkful of belongings ahead of me. Then, on the plane with me before Freshman Week, I brought two suitcases, a carry-on, and a guitar case. But I didn’t bring a wastepaper can, and the […]
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A Rite of Passage: Learning To Drive
One of the pitfalls of skipping kindergarten was that I couldn’t get my driver’s license until several months to more than a year after all my high-school friends. I didn’t turn fifteen and a half (the age for getting a learner’s permit in Washington State at the time) until October […]
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Cheering On My Rowing Husband: Des Moines Regatta, 2008
My husband took up rowing after our daughter joined the crew team at Georgetown University. Her team was really good, and they took the silver medal for lightweight women rowers at the 2006 Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship regatta her junior year. Her success at rowing spurred him on, and […]
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When Plans Go Awry
This wasn’t the post I intended to write today. But in the last couple of weeks, not much has gone as I intended. I’ve written before that I am a planner. Before I went to my daughter’s wedding, I’d planned what work I would do on my novel, on my […]
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