Motherhood
What Mother Nature teaches us.
Mother Nature–in the form of gardening–wheedled her way into my heart shortly after I became a mother.
Continue ReadingTalking with my adult children.
Now that my memoir is becoming more of a reality, with sections of my manuscript getting closer and closer to completion, it’s provided opportunities for our family to talk about what happened two decades ago in ways that we couldn’t back then when we were stumbling through it. Matt was eleven when he was diagnosed…
Continue ReadingBrain Injury: The anomaly of my story.
I almost missed it—National Brain Injury Awareness month, recognized in March. Maybe it wasn’t on my radar because I don’t talk much about my son’s brain injury; I talk of the brain tumor–a pilocytic astrocytoma–that caused it. They are intertwined in my story, the tumor in and the injury to his brain. Not much of my…
Continue ReadingGood luck is a tradition.
Maybe they knew it was less about luck and all about love. If I accomplished only that, I’m a wee bit more magical than a leprechaun.
Continue ReadingHow inaccurate memory is, even without brain damage.
At one of the final appointments before Matthew’s brain tumor diagnosis, Michael and I were both there, and we remember it differently.
Continue ReadingA special thankfulness this year.
I’m writing this on Thanksgiving morning, as I sit alone in the kitchen enjoying my coffee. It’s before Michael is awake and before Matt, our older son, comes over and we hop in the car to drive to Boston to spend Thanksgiving with Steve, our younger son.
I wasn’t going to write about Thanksgiving, but, well, maybe the spirit of the day has moved me. Or maybe it’s my special thankfulness today that has inspired me to conclude:
How can I not write?
Continue ReadingA bittersweet Halloween.
This may look like an ordinary Halloween photo of some kids. But that October 31st was anything but ordinary.
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