Just Write {84}

May 6, 2013

When Elsie Jane’s head is on my shoulder and her back has a little curve to it, when her legs are dangling and her hand is patting my back, that’s my favorite. She got sick a few days ago and I held her a lot, her head on my shoulder like that. She’s starting to say a few more words together and lately sometimes she stops to hug me and then she looks me dead in the eyes and says, Mommy. Home. She loves it when I’m home, which is most of the time and still she occasionally just stops what she’s doing to point out that this is how she likes it. Me too. On Saturday, for most of the day, I wasn’t home because we had rehearsal for Listen To Your Mother. Thursday is our show, at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis, and how did the time fly like that? Like […]

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let go, the good mother

May 1, 2013

Looking back at the beginning I see this person that I’m not. She’s familiar and still has many of the same parts, like tense shoulders and a sleep-deprived furrowed brow. She is meeting the demands of life as a new mother with a fierce determination and resistance all at once. She is almost always the martyr, trying to win The Hardest Award, a competition created in her own mind, mostly played against her husband. He doesn’t know they’re playing, so he’s always losing, which is her point, I suppose. Make up the rules and then keep them between yourself and your ruminating mind. I still do these things, sometimes. I get tired and stressed and fall back into the easiest way, which is the hardest way. Like playing a bass drum in a sound-proof room, alone, expecting the world to sit up and pay attention to the way its too loud for your […]

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Just Write {83}

April 29, 2013

From snowing to seventy-something degrees in a just a few days, we jumped. We’ve been soaking up sun like the pale and vitamin D depleted Minnesotans that we are. The sliding glass door bangs every few seconds, in and out and in and out. There’s dirt sticking to my bare feet from the muddy shoes. I don’t even care this time, this winter was just too long to begrudge a little dried spring mud. We are going through all of our things and really considering each item, Do we need this? Are we taking this to Austin? Will we get there and open a box and say “Why in the world did I pack this? Now I have to find a place for it and we never use it.” I’m a tosser, he’s a keeper. Our new garage is about a quarter of the size it would need to be to fit all […]

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on moving a family

April 24, 2013

I’m in the airport at 6:15 a.m. The perfect time to write a post for A Deeper Family, no? Well. I did. I hope I was awake enough to make sense. I do have a really large coffee and a big bottle of water, so there’s that. What a whirlwind, friends. I’m all emotional about moving and I wrote about what a move means for a family and thank God for Phillip Phillips… yeah, you can go on over to A Deeper Family to unravel that mysterious statement….if you’d like. Peace. Instagram: “Strangers across from me. Army guy. Girlfriend. Words With Friends. They are playing each other. Holding hands.”

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