It all adds up doesn’t it? I’ve had days where it’s one bad thing again and again. I couldn’t catch a break. Life seems so tough when I’m right in the middle of the storm. I used to dwell on the harder days way more then dwelling on the good ones. You know what I […]
Widowed Memories
“Go Get Yourself A Bigger Problem”
Photos by my friend Jane del Pozo Back in the early 1990s, I worked for a couple of years post-Masters, in a small consulting firm of organisational psychologists in Cambridge. One of my colleagues – let’s call her Terri – was a bullish, no-nonsense Aussie, who has stayed in my mind all these decades, despite […]
Filtering Out the Fiction
Moving from the apartment where I became widowed has had a lot of competing emotions. Taking down the photos that Clayton hung up and seeing just my dog Roan standing in our empty apartment hit me hard. Real life becomes more real in some pretty harsh, unexpected waves and ways. Worn out carpet where Clayton […]
We All Know
the Mild Misery of the Common Cold Dare I go on? Or shall I put a sign up that says Closed by a Cold with images of innumerable tissues used throughout the night and thrown onto my bed, doubling for a giant trash can? “Wait!” you say. “Fever and sore throat….those are Omicron symptoms, yes?” […]
A Flight of Stairs
Almost six years ago and three flights of stairs up, we thought our new apartment in this little beach down was part of Heaven. For 8 months I helped you walk up and down these stairs until up was to hard for the both of us. Four years after you, I stayed in our apartment. […]
A Very Covid Christmas
I celebrated Thanksgiving with Robyn and her brood, but assured Lee’s brother, Paul, that I would be celebrating Christmas with him and his family. Neither Robyn nor I celebrate Christmas as a matter of faith, but it’s an important holiday for Paul just as it was an important holiday for Lee. Sharing this holiday with […]
A STRONG PRESENCE
. . . and a Christmas Story The longer I live the more I realize how different we are as humans. What matters to one is barely a blip on the radar screen to another. What one treasures can be opposite of what another would give their life to protect. My entire life, as long […]
Today I have lived 20,000 days
Picture by Debby Hudson on Unsplash I know, notice, or choose to find out, the weirdest things about dates and days. I love number patterns. I love that my birthday is 270367 and Mike’s is 270763. Same digits. A numerical dream. Or so I chose to believe. Just recently, we have seen a lovely date […]
The Magic of the Season
I remember the magic of the holidays when I was younger. Time went by at a much slower pace waiting for that one special night followed by a day of jolly and cheer. Christmas Eve we would spend with my mom’s side of the family surrounded by aunts, uncle, cousins and grandparents. Each year my […]
NEARING YEAR’S END
Noticing the Passing of Time Frost is something that we take notice of when it arrives to our Southern California neighborhood. Many winters come and go without so much as an icy car windshield at year’s end when many places in our hemisphere are covered in snow. It was a balmy April night when he […]
A Change of Address
I’ve lived at my apartment for almost 6 years and alone in it without Clayton for almost 4 years. I am 100% full accepting that I’ve stayed in “our” apartment to press pause on parts of my life. I couldn’t have Clayton back but I could wrap myself up in him through the photos he […]
My Old Man
As a seven-year-old I wrote an essay entitled, “My Old Man,” for a second-grade writing assignment about our fathers, and instantly it had created a furor. Perhaps my teacher thought I was being disrespectful. If so, then she would have been wrong. However, I never received any explanation why she was discomfited. All I knew […]