Hail and Farewell

BD Photo 2016
Grace and Larry Ward 

I thought each call would be easier than the previous, but it’s just the opposite. Perhaps my numbness is fading, and my grief is sinking in. Or perhaps I’m just tiring of sharing with others the reality that my mother has died — tiring of sharing the circumstances and the details of how we’re all reacting, what we’re planning, how we feel.

Continue reading “Hail and Farewell”

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Stop for Flashing Lights

IMG_3848When I tell people I want to live in a school bus after I retire, reactions run the gamut. But it’s OK. I’ve already driven a bus – the bus I was riding home from school one Spring day in 1972, in 9th Grade. I wasn’t supervised at all, but only watched by the laughing and licensed bus driver who gave me her seat so that I could drive my own bus down my own street. Continue reading “Stop for Flashing Lights”

My World’s Fair

riddles

What I really wanted to be when I was growing up was a famous novelist – at least as famous as Jules Verne, and maybe even as good. Now I’m resigned to having once visited an event, probably as a seven- or eight-year-old, that was also visited (possibly on the same day, perhaps at the same time) by Kurt Vonnegut, who was then within a few years of becoming what I really wanted to become. Continue reading “My World’s Fair”

Doing Dishes, While Living Life

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A Summer Tanager – one possibility for the glorious streak of red I saw in my backyard, while I was supposed to be preparing for autumn classes.

It would be nice if life brought to us challenges in neat packages: “Deal with this, and when you’re done I’ll bring you something new to test out.” Our school days (and years) are organized along these lines.

But the events and issues on our timelines overlap and circle around and sometimes travel against time and double up and triple up and overwhelm us and trip us up when they can. We do what we can, as we are able, using our skills for parsing catastrophe, and calling on the resources we recognize in the midst of all the chaos. Continue reading “Doing Dishes, While Living Life”