Almost 100-year-old ship’s compass. I suppose it started in March, on the second day of Alex’s scheduled four-week-stay in Paris during the standard spring hiatus from work. The novel corona virus (COVID-19) was spreading rapidly, without reason or logic. Italy’s population was at high risk, especially in the north with their concentrated elderly population. France …
The Inside Passage. The email popped up in my account the middle of June: “Alaska is open!” Into month four of stay-at-home and then safer-at-home orders with no end in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent world-wide economic, financial, and social upheaval, the news caught our attention. Alaska had strict entry requirements, including negative …
My maternal grandmother c. 1970 I anticipated the moment; I received advice from sisters and friends; I read accounts; I remembered my own grandparents; I thought of my parents as grandparents. Yet, nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for the deep love I felt when I first held my long, skinny five-week-old grandson. Three years later, …
Asheville, NC looking west toward Blue Ridge Mountains. My sister says I have the “wanderer-gene”. While there is some scientific evidence of such a gene, related perhaps to those who migrated great distances or populations with a history of travel, I can’t dispute the fact that, from afar, wandering from place to place seems one …
After touching our toes in the ocean, a run on the beach. “You have to embrace the porpoise to unleash your healthy inner greyhound.” I was puzzled by my friend’s note, after I’d informed him that my physical therapist said, “No running.” I’d torn my left hamstring. The injured area throbbed with sharp, shooting pain. …
Walden Ponds Wildlife Refuge, finding solace in local beauty. Mid-March to mid-June, we stayed at home, limited our outings to the most essential and basic of needs, fretted about availability of food and household supplies, gasped as the numbers of sick and dying increased, debated the wearing of face masks outdoors while exercising, read attentively …
Mission Bay, Auckland, New Zealand A collage of images floats through my mind: me as a ten-year-old, slightly-chubby girl, tent camping in the rustic wilderness (no toilet, no running water, no electricity), homemade gauze net in hand, waiting for the night’s dew to dry, breathlessly anticipating the flitting of yellow and blue butterflies, a growing …
Time is malleable, some days endless, appointments erased, the skies gray, the almost-budded tree branches icy from temperatures dropping overnight. I feel acutely the stay-at-home order, a tense hum like electric wires beneath my skin, the current book failing to hold my attention. Other days, the world seems as it was, a streaked sunrise, a …
Bittersweet: I resigned as board member at Boulder Voices for Children at the end of my second two-year-term this January. I’ve been involved with CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) programs for the past fifteen years: Child Advocates of Placer County (northern California), CASA of Travis County (Austin, TX), and Voices for Children CASA of Boulder County (Colorado). …
Grand Lake, Colorado, Library I measure the fleetingness of each year by a compendium of the books I’ve read during that twelve-month period: was there a trend in my reading choices? Did I focus on certain genres? Which books were “must reads” or “highly recommended” by friends and colleagues? Did I read any from “best …