Subscribe to my newsletter:

Wherever I happen to be, at any given moment, gifts are there for the noticing. Even circumstances that on first blush look unfortunate, can be loaded with gifts. I open my laptop, spill my drink, and make two new friends. On my left and on my right people jump up… [Continue Reading]

I’ve often been a hold-on-er. A white-knuckle-r afraid to let go of things and people that leave. But it’s no fun to live that way. Not for me, and I’m sure not for them either. Underneath my grip is a fear of not having enough. Of not being taken care… [Continue Reading]

In longing you close your eyes, but in wonder you open them… -Myra Shapiro I started writing—really writing, like my life depended on it—when I was 11 and went off to boarding school for the first time to a country a 10-hour drive plus a 5-hour flight from where my… [Continue Reading]

It’s not for not having people who love me. Not at all. And it’s not for not loving people, including a number whose side I would pick up and fly around the world to be at in a moment’s notice if ever they said the word. There’s even a dear… [Continue Reading]

Sometimes I want to be my niece Caroline who’s cool and groovy, an awesome swimmer with a butterfly stroke that makes you jump up and down with joy (she’s 8!) and a growing leaf collection. Caroline loves girly things AND earthworms. She thinks slugs are a bit disgusting, but that… [Continue Reading]

I fell asleep with a full moon beaming on my leg and I could not sleep without putting moon on paper so I wrote this in the dark by light of said moon while a fan whirled moon-air onto moon-beamed leg and I said to myself: it is good to… [Continue Reading]

That flashlight you say I stole (but you had two !)—I used it last night to read Rilke under coverto the patter of rain and a clock ticking two. It shone a dim, just-full-enough moonon the baffling beauty that a lover of word and worldcan make out of being inexorably… [Continue Reading]

I have joint custody of a stuffed bear. He was a gift early in my last relationship when my love had to be away traveling very often. We took great joy in naming him for a dear character in a somewhat obscure favorite book. The bear’s name is Oscar Humlum,… [Continue Reading]