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Waist deep in a flowerbed full of colorful zinnias, I stopped weeding. I looked up and saw a monarch butterfly and then it hit me - I was wonderstruck. Its beauty was so captivating that it filled me with awe. I often feel this way when I experience the presence of something bigger than myself. Perhaps you have felt it, too. It's easy to get lost in a nature's great splendor - a starry sky, a technicolor sunset, a summer garden in full bloom. Have you ever observed the way...
It's not as if my teenage son needs more reason to be embarrassed of me, but at lunch recently, I know he wanted the earth to swallow him alive, right there at the cash register. I had been working at home that day as a mom. A mom whose kids were about to go back to school after a summer that had started the day before, in fact, had barely even happened. As such, I was online all morning filling out forms, ordering supplies, synching calendars, buying books, etc. On this parti...
I confess I've been reading other people's mail for many of the past decades. No, I've not been opening stuff misdelivered to my mailbox. I'm talking about the letters of people famous enough to have theirs collected into books. But that's gotten me to thinking about the words of the rest of us - we who are not famous - whose stuff will never be collected into books. I've heard it said that ultimately, all we have to leave behind are our stories. I fear, by that measure, we...
Remember the old cliché about insanity - doing something over and over again, but expecting a different outcome? That's, frankly, kind of the way I've been behaving for the past year. Same stuff, different day, so to speak. To my distress, I've become accustomed to the monotony, my capacity for surprise dulled into complacency and cynicism. Nothing new happens. Notre Dame had an undefeated season, only to get crushed in their final game. Again. Someone with a name that...
In my last column, I wrote about getting drenched. I said that the sky above our family was falling and our roof was leaking. Since that column, our monsoon has thankfully passed. My family is dry, and we are together. I mentioned the buckets we placed to stave off flooding. Today, I want to tell you about the umbrellas that shielded us from the worst of the storm. They do not, cannot, mop up the messiness of our lives, collect our pain in buckets and hope it will be...
With Valentine's Day just around the corner, I have started paying extra close attention to the way the definition of love has changed over the last few decades. Over dinner the other night, my mom told me about the love story of her parents. My grandpa lived in Panama and kept a long distance relationship with my Grandma, who lived in Switzerland. He would call her every night after he got off work. But with the time difference, this would be around 3 a.m. in Switzerland. My...
When I moved my household from Washington, D.C. into storage, I got rid of about 100 books. Some were obvious choices, like the global trade textbook that was required for a class I took in 1989 but irrelevant both to me and the current study of economics. Some gave me pause, like the novel "London" by Edward Rutherford. It's an informative history of the city wrapped up in a gripping 2,000-year narrative, but it comes in at 829 pages and weighs a ton. As I went through this...
In September 2019, I thought it would be wise to get my doc's clearance prior to running 26.2 miles on a Sunday the following month. In my check up, he asked something typically not asked by a doctor - "What do you eat?" Although I ate relatively healthy at the time, he strongly encouraged focusing on a plant-based diet. He recommended some Netflix documentaries ("Forks Over Knives" and "The Game Changers"), a website (NutritionFacts.org), and a book ("How Not To Die" by Dr. M...
T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock once famously stated that he had "measured out (his) life with coffee spoons." In these parlous times, however, I've found myself measuring out my life by limited streaming series. Normally, all I do is read, but it's been difficult lately. At least, it's been difficult to concentrate on the type of fiction I normally read - that is, realistic fiction about everyday people in everyday settings having everyday problems. Honestly, that kind of wri...
From a global pandemic to a tumultuous U.S. presidential election, 2020 has wreaked havoc on our minds, bodies and spirits. It was a soul-crushing year, yet - despite it all - I've learned some valuable lessons along the way that I'm looking forward to taking with me into 2021. As I look back on this past year, I'm proud of how my family and I navigated uncertainty and maintained consistency when the world around us was rapidly changing. In a year that was spent social...
5! It’s almost here, and I’ve never been more excited to welcome a new year. New Year’s is usually a pretty ho hum holiday in my book, but not this year, no ma’am. It’s been a train wreck of a year, and my readiness for transition from the old to the new is bigger than ever. Here’s how I would describe it ... Like a record player run out of songs, 2020 has been stuck riding the label, sliding and crackling at the end, the staticky nothingness signaling the conclusion of the...
For as long as I can remember, my mom has been the queen of Christmas. Perhaps your family has its own Christmas queen or king? Someone whose love for the holidays is so effervescent that it brings happiness to everyone around them. Each year well before December, my mom is already thinking about Christmas. Her unbridled joy for the holiday season has her planning new decorations, recipes and special handmade gifts. She spends months on end hand-stitching beautiful...
The sky is falling. At least our sky is falling, over our home, and within our family. Health concerns of beloved family members have my husband and me scrambling to help. I used to think we had a modicum of control over our lives, over our "sky" if you will, but as we are placing metaphorical buckets under our dripping roof, I realize we are powerless in the face of certain life events. We can only react to these events and try our best to do right by our families and friends...
Behind the steering wheel of my 2016 Toyota RAV 4 Hybrid, I've made some of my best memories. From hearing my favorite song on the radio for the first time, to driving to the city to watch the sunrise with my best friend, to going to school with my younger brother, those are the memories that will stick with me. However, when I tell my parents that I'm going to "drive around with friends," they look absolutely mortified. I'm not sure if it's the fact that my driving record...
It's time to look back at the year that was and reflect on lessons learned. Of course, learning a lesson is not the same as applying it, and I am far from skilled at practicing what I'm preaching. While I never got around to picking up a new language or learning a new instrument, I think I've developed an important skill: the ability to listen. People at work and in my personal life have often told me to listen more. I would try, but actually I was basically still engaging...
With politics dominating the headlines, I am consciously - but maybe not subconsciously - steering well clear of any partisan chatter. You'll get your share of that during Thanksgiving with the crazy relative who's convinced there is still a path to victory in a race already declared lost. Instead, this commentary is on a fall decluttering project. Recently, I elected to make a change and began a task of discarding things that I desperately wanted gone from the House. Back in...
The happy frenzy of the holiday cooking season is coming. It would seem that Thanksgiving is all about the traditional turkey, but in our house I know better. Everything I make is just a lead-in to arguably the best part of our holiday meal - pie! Every year I make multiple pies for just four people, because choosing one pie is far too difficult. It's a delicious dilemma because there are so many wonderful possibilities. Last year, our usual holiday plans were suddenly...
Growing up, I always believed that attaining higher education and possessing an above-average IQ were strong indicators of success. I believed that a class schedule full of AP classes would lead to a top-rated university, which in turn would lead to a life of prosperity and achievement. Study hard, work hard and all of your dreams will come true. The reality is that's not always the case. While it's true that some people with fancy degrees go on to live highly successful...
Early into the school shutdowns this past spring, I got reassured by the two girls next door. Not missing a beat, Caroline began Zooming ballet, younger Julia hip hop. Caroline took violin, Julia the clarinet, and both took piano - also virtually. While I doubted this to be as effective as in-person learning, I was much impressed by their resilience, enthusiasm and optimism. I pondered all this more, weeks later. News of the California fires brought video of adults and...
It seemed like 2020 just couldn't stop dishing out nasty surprises, so this summer I went rogue and took a 1,400-hundred mile road trip to Arizona with the kids and the dog. I'd not driven across country since I was maybe 12, but there I was, toting teenaged children and a stubborn, 70-pound (shedding!) Basset hound through six different states during a global pandemic. Long car trips were a summer staple for my family in the '70s and early '80s. Airplane rides were strictly f...
Picture this: you're walking into Wrigley Field and see the Sox playing. You check your tickets and nope, it's not the Cross Town Classic. That is the same feeling every single junior across Illinois felt when they received email after email, month after month with the subject: ACT CANCELED FOR APRIL. Then, the same thing two months later, ACT CANCELED FOR JUNE. We were walking into the stadium completely blindsided. Only this time, the stadium was our college admissions...
Finally - after being apart since February, I was able to see my partner Patrick in person. We spent the month of August in Ireland, after waiting through various July deadlines to see if the restrictions keeping me from France, where Patrick had been quarantined since February, would be lifted. Fortunately, Ireland, like the UK, was still open to US citizens traveling from here, as long as we self-quarantined for 14 days after arrival. In Ireland, things seemed so, well, norm...
Bob Dylan once sang about prior generations turning a cynical eye to youth activism. Fifty-six years later, when recent Hinsdale Central grad Maiwen Amegadjie organized June's peaceful protest against racial oppression, some Hinsdale business owners criticized young protesters claiming the timing was not right and that "nothing good will come out of it." A quote from Maiwen touched upon that criticism: "... I feel like a lot of people are sheltered and cloistered here. They...
Every home has a story to tell. We live in an orange brick 1960s colonial revival. Our Realtor affectionately called it the "Leave It to Beaver House." Our house was well-loved, but it took time for it to really feel like it was ours. A few months after we moved in, I realized I had severely underestimated how long my painting projects would take with two preschoolers in tow. My house dreams were beginning feel a bit deflated. I was worried that my daughters might never nap...
If there's one thing that the pandemic has taught me, it's that the over-scheduled and over-consumerized lifestyles that we were once living is not sustainable. The societal pressure to excel at everything and "keep up with the Joneses" is slowly eating away at our collective mental and physical health. For many of us, going back to basics has been a necessity. More home-cooked meals, fewer extracurricular activities and ample time in the home have prompted many to redefine...
