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…
I woke up with a jump-start. I showered, shaved, and slathered on my favorite smelling lotion. Despite day 41 of sheltering in place, I was determined. It was my birthday. I LOVE birthdays! I was going to make this day feel as pre-pandemic as possible – and the next day. My newly minted sixteen-year-old and…
I broke down in front of my girls. Now it was my turn to cry under the stress of it all. It was Easter. No family gathering. A pre-made rather than homemade meal was planned. The girls’ Easter baskets were empty for the first time in history because the gift I planned to give was…
Backpack-bound and smiling, my girls pierced the silent serenity of my car talking over each other and fussing over who would sit shotgun as we pulled away from their dad’s house. They were instantly chattering about the topic of the day – the topic now of every day – coronavirus. We hit the highlights: How…
“I don’t want to go to Dad’s. I have all of my school stuff here and I don’t want to pack it up.” I knew it would come. Last week was “I can’t wait to go” and this week it was bemoaning the same fact. Co-parenting during COVID-19 continues. This week in my lawyer role,…
