“They were the same little people whose snowy socks went around and around my dryer...”
Being Human - Childhood - Difficulty - Family - Food - For fun. - Light - Loss - This really happened.
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There once was a five-year old boy. It was summertime — and of course — there were fireflies. Many, many fireflies. This child, with his mommy and his daddy, spent one summer evening chasing those fireflies…and catching them…and putting them each, one by one, into a tall jar. Now…there is this jar….like a lantern….filled with maybe twenty or so fireflies. This classic childhood adventure was then followed by a bath — and bed — and the lantern of fireflies was put on his dresser. There was then a story, a kiss and the door was closed. It was perhaps thirty…
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She told me that what she missed the most was that in winter, when the day was sunny, that the actual sun actually warmed the landscape. Because in the North, in the U.S., a super sunny day can also be subzero, fahrenheit. What a novel idea…that the sun is warm?! We were walking down from the Città Alta, the Upper city of Bergamo. We had gone up on the Funicolare and were now walking down on the top of the city walls. On the landscape were the close Alps and farther afoot, we could see the Appennini…the mountains that run…
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I woke to a dream where I was on the street in twilight. With my little child. A son or a daughter, perhaps. The sky was losing light. The day had been long. It was much too late to be out with such a baby – it was time to be home. But this one had their arms up in the air and was crying, “book, book”. “up, up.” We were outside the library. Its doors closed to the day. “Book, book”. They cried. There was the memory and allure of story time – a part of a perfect morning…
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Being Human - Blessings - Childhood - Darkness - Difficulty - Family - Fear - Hope - Light - Loss - UncategorizedWatch me reading The Hospital Bed.
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When my son was very, very small, there was a book we used to read to him. This book told the story of a mother and her a little boy who walked to a beach, across the dunes to the resting of the waves. They looked for starfish; they had a picnic of sandwiches and pink lemonade. Lying on their blanket, they had a nap. At the end of that afternoon they walked home. And on the way, the book said, they saw the sun low in the sky, gleaming, a huge orange ball. Then it was gone. When we…
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But ah, the exuberance of teenagers. Where I live, when there is a football game, the whole town is transformed. Everywhere you will find exuberance and excitement and the color red. Well yesterday, I was off to my morning thing and passed a local school…all along the road you could see 14 and 15-year old boys (don’t ask me how I know, I just know) holding signs saying “Football Parking, $5". They are jumping up and down. They are beside themselves. They are splendid! I am stopped — four of them rush over to my car — ‘hey, come and…
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When we lived in St. Louis I taught kindergarten sunday school. At the beginning of class, as in many sunday schools, first we took attendance and then we collected a little something for charity. On one particular day we passed the small donation envelope around the room. Quarters fell in, dimes, on top of one another, ‘clink, clink . . . clink.’ It was little Lauren’s turn. She had found a twenty-dollar bill at a store earlier that week and had turned it in to the store’s ‘lost and found’. After a few days the store called her parents to…
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When I was a little girl, I always thought I would live near Chicago. It had never, in fact, occurred to me that any one of us might leave. But then, for me, there was California and then Missouri – Georgia and now Wisconsin. Finding a home and making a home has become very important to me. It might be also for many people. My friend’s nine-year old daughter continued to look at houses on zillow.com, for hours at a time– for three months after they had already moved. Was she still looking for a place to belong? A hundred…
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When I was a little girl living near Chicago, I imagined that the worst thing that could happen would be if a tornado hit my school. Several times during the school year our principal would get on the loudspeaker and announced “Operation Ajax” — which meant that we would line up at the door and proceed into the hallway where there were no windows — sitting against the walls with our heads between our knees — our arms protecting our necks against potential flying glass. As it happened, my school was never actually hit by a tornado. A few years…
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Three days ago this happened: There is a family in Tel Aviv…many families in Tel Aviv…who go to the shelters with their children when the alarms sound. This family has two little boys — ages 4 and 7. One night this week the air sirens sounded. The family hurried to the shelter. It was 2:30 am. The sleepy 7 year-old said to his mom: “ema, which army do you like better…which army do you want to win”? Well, this young mother didn’t honestly know how to answer. How does one explain to a little boy about death and war…