Despite the COVID pandemic, my Thanksgiving this year was downright crowded I mused. The day included Oliver, Willie, Mac (my cats) and me, myself, and I. That got my count to my second hand at least. Big sigh. Lucky for me, I have had years – 10 to be exact – practicing solo traditions and…
I lay on my couch too listless to pick up the book I want to read or even to pick up the remote to watch a new murder docuseries I had saved. Maybe I will turn on music – but my phone is on the dining room table. I remember I need to take the…
I was sitting in my sadness wishing away the state of the world. Halloween isn’t going to be the same this year. My Thanksgiving table will not host my parents or my children. My December traditions will resemble, at best, hollowed out holidays. These sorrows seem petty next to the messages from my friends tearing…
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn into the United States Supreme Court August 10, 1993. That same month, I moved out of my parents’ home and into my first college dormitory. That month, my dad made sure I had opened my first credit card to account for any emergencies. I walked into college with my future and possibilities ahead…
Patrick and Shirley Dunne are my parents. Pat and Shirley celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on September 19, 2020. They married with little fanfare but great love in a tiny church in Portland, Oregon. After the ceremony, they did not go to a wedding reception. There wasn’t one. Instead, they went to the hospital to…
“Like mother, like daughter” she said in response to my daughter reporting I took her to a doctor to inspect a dime-sized black spot on her thigh that after a week was not resolving. When my distressed daughter relayed this to me, I asked for the context. “I don’t know mom! Why does she ever…
I just turned it off one day. It was too much. I could no longer consume, react, and mourn the rancorous dissension filling up my social media feeds and nightly newscasts. To mask or not to mask, to reopen restaurants and bars or not, to social distance or stay quarantined – it was all taking…
I found myself careening down a mountain, my hands gripping the steering wheel, and rarely uttered prayers slipping out of my mouth up toward the heavens. The gas gauge read 0 miles. Zero. None. No more. I had already gone 7 miles on 0 miles of gas left in my tank and panic was setting in. This…
Excitement is building with news of states opening back up after the initial wave of COVID in our community. That old familiar feeling of what can only be explained as bubbles swirling in my stomach and heart on the precipice of bursting. I put pen to paper this week planning those first steps back into…
Exhaustion, tears, and tense lines across foreheads were daily revealing themselves to me as I checked in with my team. I studied them in Brady Bunch boxes on zoom. I could feel their frustrations, fears, and as we tally-marked our COVID way through March and now through April. Our culture is built on principle of…
