What Great Mothering is Really All About
She turns 60 this week. I have known her for just more than half of those years, and in the same way she has watched me grow from infant to toddler to teenager to adult with infants and toddlers of my own, so I have watched her grow. I have watched those black-brown...
The Secret to Winning at School When You Have Kids
Husband and I are winning at school. I’m not trying to sound pompous or anything. I mean, the year just started. But our failing is pretty legendary. If you had seen us at the end of last school year, you’d know that we were the parents who stopped signing our kids’...
Dear Parents of Young Children: This Won’t Last Forever
“How are you today?” one of your mom friends asks as she passes you in the hallway of your sons’ elementary school. You fire back the typical, expected response. “Doing well,” you say, even though, if one were to open up the heart of you, one would see that you are...
How to Create More Efficiently With (and Learn From) Our Kids
If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I have six boys all born within a span of eight years. The oldest is now nine, and the two who fall beneath him are seven and six. They’re the only ones in school right now, so when they’re out for the summer, we make it a...
This is What Beautiful Feels Like
Some days I know the truth, and some days it gets buried so far beneath those old lies I can hardly remember its echo. This morning I woke up feeling out of sorts. Not unexpected, since there is a baby who had trouble sleeping. Since there was a brain that just wouldn’t turn off. Since […]
What Old Photographs Can Teach Us About Our Lives
Recently, the family and I took a short trip to see my mom, who still lives in the hometown where I grew up. My mom and I got to talking one night about some of the stories I’m brainstorming right now, and she mentioned that she’d love to see a story about my...
Dear Planner: You Don’t Have to Know Everything
I know how it is. I know how it goes. You just want to know what’s coming. You want to know if there’s something bad around the corner, or something good, because you don’t want to lose your heart to the bad, and you don’t want to lose your hope to the good, because...
How I Learned to Love (Or Maybe Just Like) Cooking
When you have kids, you realize pretty early on that they have to eat three times a day, every single day, and that’s not counting snacks. We don’t do a whole lot of snacking in our house, but we do cook pretty much everything from scratch. This means that a lot of...
Dear Teacher: Please Take Care of Our Children
Every summer, it’s the same old thing. The school year creeps up on us, after more than two months spent playing together and resting together and just being together, and here comes my old friend anxiety. I worry that they won’t have the right teacher. I worry that...
To the Kindergarten Parent on the First Day of School
Tomorrow I will rise early and sit through reading and writing and praying and then I will steal down the stairs to prepare breakfast and then steal back up to kiss them from their beds and point to their chalkboard schedules. Tomorrow I will walk down a concrete sidewalk, my hand wrapped around the fingers […]