A Tall Girl's Adventures in a Tiny World

Zippy is an old soul, I’m sure of it. Recycled. Determined to do better this time around. My sister is similar - always wise beyond her years, deep convictions, high anxiety, overthinking most decisions. I wonder, in fact, if anxious people are all recycled souls. Like perhaps we who are anxious know now, this time around, how harsh life can be, all the many ways we can be hurt physically and emotionally. (However, I wonder, too, if others of us, like me, are anxious because we haven't been here before and we don’t know what to expect? Hmm...may have to work on this theory.) I like the idea of souls recycling. Like perhaps when we leave this particular Earth Suit, our souls go through a cleaning process. Some might come back squeaky clean, without memory or experience stored away. But others come back with residue. Little bits of memory stuck on them, ground in. Jake does seem to be in touch with memories from another life. Remember how, when he was very little, he used to talk of ...

Today Honey's roommate in room 364 at Maine Medical Center was discharged. Some other day I'll tell you about why Honey is in the hospital again, but this story is about the roommate because it's way more interesting. Let's call him Elton, because all I really know about him is he plays guitar in an Elton John tribute band and he's originally from the very northern part of England, bordering Scotland. (Or as Honey described it, "that place in England where the Roman Empire decided, nope, those Celts are crazy, and put up a wall.") Elton was in room 364 before Honey arrived, and what struck me immediately, besides his delightful accent and soothing Liam-Neeson-esque voice, was his gentle, good-natured manner. He was going through heck from a botched surgery and compartment syndrome - pain and gore and fear of losing the use of his dominant hand - yet he spoke kindly and softly to every person who came into his room. Every time a nurse walked in, Elton gre...

I walk a lot. Walking is one of the pieces of my Portland lifestyle that I value most, in fact: countless trails, parks, paths, and sidewalks that not only get me where I need to be, but also show me woods and sea and proud old homes and all sorts of loveliness. (I also walk past a lot of not-so-lovely in this town each day, but we'll save that for another post.) Sometimes when I walk through a quiet neighborhood, like the one over here along Clifton Street in Back Cove, I feel envious of single-family homes and yards and kid-friends playing together in the driveway. Other times in these same neighborhoods, I feel grateful for the ample parking and snow removal of our rental home, as well as for landscapers who cut the grass and landlords who come to fix the kitchen lights or replace the dryer when it punks out. When I walk through Evergreen Cemetery, often I feel contemplative, peaceful; its consecrated ground and hundreds of years of history soothes me. Other times I feel sad and...

Has this fall been darker than previous years? Maybe. But probably not. Fall is fall, after all. You know by now, just by reading my last few posts, it's not been an easy year.I've been sad.  I've been scared. I've been angry. The world doesn't make much sense to me when I consider what's outside the walls of my own home, and sometimes even things inside my home don't make much sense. And every time someone asks, "So, you ready for Christmas?" as if they're looking for me to fall apart into a pile of frazzled nerves and broken promises, I feel my shoulders creeping closer to my ears. What the heck does that mean, really, to be ready for Christmas? We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, our kids, our loved ones, don't we, around this time of year? I've felt an acute aversion in 2016 to the barrage of ads on television, to the glut of promotional emails in my inbox, to the manic holiday songs in every public space. I pushed back agai...

This is a week of bittersweet milestones, dates on which we may celebrate and grieve simultaneously. My mother, Carol, would have turned 67 this week. My mother-in-law, Kathleen, would have turned 75 just a few days later. We took one Mom's ashes to the sea 19 years ago; we'll take one Mom's ashes to the sea in a few weeks. We'll celebrate their legacies of love, family, resilience, and laughter; but we will always grieve the empty spaces that won't fill in. They've both gone too soon. Happy asked me recently why we take the remains of our loved ones to the ocean when they die. He and I were floating on boogie boards in the North Atlantic at the time, near a sheltered beach called Kettle Cove, a serene and lovely Maine-postcard beach. My first response was, "Because that's what they wanted."  He was quiet, plaintive, mulling it over. "But why?"  I thought of my mother, my grandmother and grandfather, so many childhood memorie...

One of our two kids may be just pretending to believe in Santa Claus this year. It's okay. He's 10. One of these days we may have to tell him what's up. We have never made a big deal about Santa, beyond the standard traditions of sending a wish list letter and leaving out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve. But I've always worried about the day he asks questions for real and I have to give him for-real answers. So whenever my kids ask me if I believe in Santa Claus, I say I believe in everything Santa stands for, all that he means: generosity, care for everyone, magic, excitement, and love. I tell them that believing in Santa is not just for little kids but for anyone who feels these things during the Christmas season. I never really swear by all the fairy tale details, but I say instead that I've never actually seen Santa Claus in person.  These are the things my mom said to me, and eventually I got it. I don't remember feeling betrayed or fooled; I felt...

A friend is going through something pretty scary and terrible right now -- a health situation about which most of us would say "Oh, that's my nightmare" -- and I haven't been able to figure out how to help her. I mean, I pray for her and listen to her and cheer for her, and I try to run interference when others ask too many (or too few) questions about her condition. But I feel like there's not much I can physically do to help. When someone you love is sick, don't you want to just wrap your arms around them and will the sickness out of them? I do. I want to use the power of my love to pull the illness out, like that big guy in The Green Mile . Alas, I can't do that, not ever, but certainly not this time. This time it needs more than hugs. The air today is crisp in all the ways you'd imagine fall in New England should be: chilly and breezy and sparkling with sunshine. The leaves on our trees are just about at their peak color, which means the air arou...

I don't think I wrote about it here, but my word for 2014 was Grace. I selected it from a bowl at church and pored over it for a few months, studying the morphology and religious and lay interpretations if the word. I found over the course of a few months, the word grace came up often in sermons and speeches, but also in conversation, readings, or general "symbols" around me. Maybe because I was thinking about it and paid more attention...or maybe because the universe was trying to get me to pay attention.  In fact, when I came to Portland for my interview -- the one that eventually led us on the giant leap-of-faith relocation adventure we've been on -- the company took me out to dinner in a beautiful restaurant that had previously been a church. Its name, I'm sure you'll guess: Grace. I smiled inwardly throughout dinner, grateful and gracious (and hopefully graceful) and winking at the universe for this big flashing sign that everything about this idea wa...

This afternoon I called the police because I witnessed a man beating a woman on the street. I saw a few dozen homeless folks waiting outside the soup kitchen, as I do each morning and evening. I turned on the news and writhed as I watched reports of Baltimore burning, another rage-fueled episode in our country's churning racial struggle. This story eclipsed, at least for a little while, news of the devastating earthquakes and avalanches in Nepal that have killed thousands in one of the world's poorest countries. I spent a lot of time today noticing things that are wrong with the world, until at last I grew weary and sad. Then I came upstairs to bed and saw this, and I quickly remembered all that is right on our beautiful, fucked up planet. Love wins. Every time. It has to. It simply must.

This evening on our slog home from work and preschool through treacherous snow-laden streets, I felt stressed about getting to Happy on time, anxious about my cross-country trip tomorrow, upset about our house not selling, and weighed down by countless other worries stomping across my mind. I felt pretty grumpy, clenched. Then I looked out the window and noticed the sky over the cove was exactly my favorite color. The color my bridesmaids, my sister-friends, wore at my wedding. The color on the walls of Zippy's bedroom in our Delaware house, where I nursed him and sang to him in wee hours that belonged only to us. The color of the sea-glass medallion my grandmother gave me that I wear around my neck, over my heart. I think this is grace, right? That small voice that says, "Be still and know that I am." The reminder that life is beautiful and interesting always. The assurance that I am blessed and protected and always will be provided for. Even at the end of a...

I wrote this email to my "7 for 7" group at church. We have been reading a book titled  7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess (Jen Hatmaker, 2013) and examining how we can be more conscientious about our own life excesses, both personally and as a church group. Reading this book has coincided with my own yearning to change my setting and habits -- and has helped tremendously as we ready our family for our relocation to Maine: So, just as I pulled into the driveway Tuesday evening, after our fun little apple cider party, I received a text message from the owner of the condo we were planning on renting in Gorham, Maine: "We've received an offer on our house. Really have to consider it." Mind you, we had already signed the lease, set the date with our movers for November 3, and enrolled our kids in Gorham schools. I almost threw up. Long story shorter, they did decide to sell the house...pretty much right out from under us. But you know what happened? ...

We're about to do something big and scary and exciting and amazing: In less than two weeks, we're moving to Maine. Because I have a fabulous new job. Can you believe it? After years of being unhappy and frustrated in my Delaware job, I have been hired to an excellent position at one of the premier publishers in our field -- and they've asked me to move to Portland, Maine, where the office is located. Many people have looked at me funny when I say this is a dream come true, but I've longed to live in Maine since I was a child scrambling the rocky coastline of Acadia National Park with my brother. New, better job; beautiful small-city for a hometown; fresh air and space for my kids to flourish; a fresh start for us all. It's a super-mega dream scenario. I'm terrified. Yet there has only been one afternoon when I lost my nerve, sobbing when I realized how much it's going to cost us to sell our home in Delaware. My smart, practical husband said, "I'll...