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Beginner's Heart

This is a post about sharing. About a man who has inspired me for a long time, and his impending loss. It’s about intelligence, wit, and vulnerability. And the irreplaceable magic of those braided qualities. It’s about making a good life, and a good death. I don’t know when I first discovered Oliver Sacks. Perhaps even before…

  Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve visualised my mind as an old house. And lately it seems more like a house that needs a LOT of TLC — re: it’s  kind of a mess. So when the facilitator at the writing retreat I’m at today asked us to ‘make a list’ to…

This is Rattus norvegicus, the common brown rat. It’s the same rat many lab rats are bred from, and it’s SMART. Also, not so nice to have as a wild resident. As in: living in your laundry room. Even if the laundry room is only an occasional outing (inning?) from the garage, where it’s set…

I hurt someone’s feelings today. Hurt them completely unintentionally, but still deeply. Reminded a man of ways in which the world may see him, even though I don’t believe I do. And even though I apologised — heartfelt, humbly, and more than once (more than twice) — he believes I don’t like him. Because I also…

We have several bird feeding stations on our deck: suet feeders, a seed cylinder, sunflower seed, and small seed (mostly millet) for our sparrows. In the summer, we trade out one of the 2 suet feeders for a hummingbird feeder, and add yet another. There are also 2 different-sized watering saucers — one deeper for…

For Valentine’s Day, I bought my beloved an early present, before I left town. 🙂 Seriously — he loves music, and with his busted up knees, it’s sometimes a royal pain to get up & change the music. So, I bought him a bluetooth gadget that coordinates between his phone and our receiver. Cool, huh?…

When I was very young, I was afraid the people I loved — mostly my old ladies — would die. And their deaths were important only as they impacted me (remember, I was a child). I would lose them.  And be utterly lost without them. Even then, product though I was of Methodist vacation Bible…

These are the brooms I grew up with: grasses tied together by hand, swept carefully over wooden floors. I still love them, although I have no idea where you’d find them now. I suspect I’d sweep more often if I still had a broom like this. Which is by way of returning to a subject…

No, I didn’t make ginger scones to go w/ the roast beef. That would just be…odd. Obviously, none of the three go…together. That’s not the point, is it? I made the chicken soup yesterday. Since we didn’t have baking powder, I had to make the cornbread today. Because ‘the point’ is to have plenty of…

This is what grief looks like when you have a child — an everyday Saturday in the park, giving your not-quite-two-year-old exactly what he needs: sunlight and attention. Something that’s been in short supply these past few days. Grief when you have children means you have to be, as my beloved says, the grownup in…
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