Growing with gratitude for life's challenges
Lining up our blended ducks on our wedding day. Many years later, ducks old and new, line up with our ‘baatis’ – Somali pyjamas. Featured image is Whistling Ducks. Submitted for Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week challenge: getting your ducks in a row.
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As you read this, Ric and I will be saying farewell to Texas and our cozy home on the canal. We leave behind new friends, the countless birds who have so entertained us, and the beautiful Gulf Coast. I am both excited to be home, and sad to end our time here. But isn’t that […]
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The year my father turned 75, I decided to gift him with a letter of gratitude. We’d had a difficult go, and while I sometimes hated him, I always loved him, and I wasn’t sure I’d expressed the latter enough. I acknowledged his personal struggles, and apologized for any heartache I’d caused him, choosing to […]
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The candy shop across the bay, has weathered many storms. Fresh-made caramel and toffee, homemade chocolates and vintage sweets, appeal to kids of all ages – especially this one. Two years ago this island town was hit by a hurricane, and there are signs of devastation everywhere, but the butler on the porch of the […]
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” I’m worried about my generation, Mom. There are so few male role models to set an example, how are we supposed to know how to live our lives?” My son was fifteen when he shared this concern with me. Having watched his own father turn his back during our divorce, and witnessing the same […]
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Father abhorred laziness. “The idle mind is the Devil’s playground!” he’d say. Or: “What are you trying to do; win the horizontal championship?” Well, I’m the horizontal champion now, thanks to illness. Wonder what he’d say about that? Still, I’m not lazy. To my face he was hardcore, unless he was soppy drunk, then the […]
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Situated at the crossing point of two rivers, our little town was once indigenous hunting ground, until European settlers arrived in the 1840’s taking advantage of the rich deposits of limestone. Much of the original architecture remains, giving the village an old world charm. The television series, Murdoch Mysteries, has used our train station and […]
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(* or any male of influence growing up.) I can’t count the number of times my father’s words hover over me, even though he’s been gone since 2005. He was the king of platitudes – constantly quoting (and making us recite) the works of Dale Carnegie, or Norman Vincent Peale. “Mind over matter,” he’d say […]
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Questions are piling up over here, with very few answers. Isn’t that life? And maybe that is the point: we are meant to reflect, to ponder, to search, to explore. As a teacher, the emphasis was on inquisition: teaching children to think beyond the obvious, find the tools to research deeper. In this ever-increasing digital […]
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Look at us building fencespretending we have differences do we not hunger the samehunt in the same places do we not strive with equal intentbuild our nests with the same ferocity forgo passion to survive?Let us stop pretending let down these walladmit to our vulnerabilities align our purposesfight a more fearsome foe. (Cee’s black and […]
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One Woman's Quest II 