Month: January 2022

When Jayden lost her Grandma “B”—her trailblazing beloved role model for everything from community contribution to hiking in Croatia in your 80s—it hit hard. When Jayden and her fiancé get married this spring, they’ll be missing two other grandmothers, too. Both of Blake’s grandmas recently passed in a span of a few weeks.  Being age eligible for admission into this tribe of elders, I see the power of grandparenting regularly. Friends fill texts with adorable pictures of toddlers with saucer eyes and irresistible smiles. Pride appears in posts of kindergarten graduations, art exhibitions, and athletic competitions. The joy their children’s

Moonbeam and her sister Daisy Mae were born halfway through the second year of the pandemic. Darling fawn-colored kittens, they came from a cage with their sibs to a two-story home in which to race, romp, and rest.  They spend their days enjoying the back yard bird show from their respective chairs in the sunroom and in watchful waiting for one of us to walk through the door with the promise of supper. Evenings invariably involve one or both of them helping to complete the daily crossword puzzle while perched on legs outstretched on the recliner.  Sometime between lights out and morning light, I feel the gentle pressure of tiny paws atop the winter comforter making their way across my body. When on my back,

It’s time. Time to get off that sofa bearing your imprint from those holiday hours with the remote. Time to put away the holly mugs, follow up on that FedX gift that never arrived, and lose your peppermint and peanut brittle poundage.  My silent admonition to get crackin’ runs a vague jingle of anxious energy through my body. I spot the stack of glittered cards with pop up penguins and heartwarming photos of friends with puppies and grandchildren in color coordinated outfits and feel the weight of unfulfilled intentions from the year gone by.  Some of us are wired to move slowly. Some to rush.  I lean toward the latter. I typically get eager to put my annual goals in writing and get going on the action plan.  But despite my thoughts