Whole World by Hsueh-Feng The whole world is you. Yet you keep thinking there is something else. Yesterday I made a protective cone around my center of strength and propelled myself through the day. The memory of the last election taught me that I needed a plan. A plan like a salve: self-care so […]
Author: Nancy Schatz Alton
Hummingbirds & Hips
Hummingbirds & hips by Nancy Schatz Alton My left hip holds the unnameable; the nerves that pulse here stop me from running & yet these strong legs still hold me up (like the tree trunk out front that refuses to die) & bring me to windows to spy hummingbirds. I have a feeling these […]
Real Love
If I love what is real, I love the trees outside my window in the same way that I love bad endings. The click of a phone line that ended a friendship. The way it opened me up into seeing what still surrounds me. My husband asking me if I missed my friend. My husband […]
The Daily Posting Continues…
I can’t log onto Facebook. I’ve managed to get myself locked out due to using two-factor identification and not being patient while waiting for passwords. This is a good thing. I had already started limiting my time to using it for work and no longer logging on after work or on weekends. But I wasn’t […]
Tacos: Ordinary or Extraordinary?
Tacos on Tuesdays make me content. Crunchy delight: salsa, cheese, beans, veggies & shells, the ordinary tastes extraordinary to me. Oh, November 2nd. I already wanted to break my promise to you, the one about blogging every day. I guess that is why people make promises. It’s easy to blog on day 1, announce to […]
November
November* by Nancy Schatz Alton What will I miss when I’m gone? The smell of my Grandma Becker’s house, her front steps. The run over to Grandma Schatz’s porch, her kitchen with the square of wood I stood on and moved by moving my hips, the ceiling decorated with homemade noodles, her over-sweetening my cereal […]
The Songs That Make Us
The Songs That Make Us by Nancy Schatz Alton When I play Romeo & Juliet on the piano I’m transported back to high school how I played out my grief again & again (slowly, far from well) as my mother listened. When I got stuck (often) she called out, keep going! She knew I played […]
Everything changes too fast.
Everything changes too fast. By Nancy Schatz Alton A friend asks me, ‘What’s it like to paddle board in the fog?’ She doesn’t know that my husband and I put the paddle board away in its winter home last night, atop the fishing boat. He might take the boat out again before spring. I might […]
Making a Path
Making a Path by Nancy Schatz Alton We are whacking our way through a forest, untamed. Underneath the understory there’s a million stories: Everyone who came before us making a path of every mistake and misstep broken trust and dried out bones wheels falling off the tracks ruts underneath the understory. We make our own […]
The Letting Go
The Letting Go by Nancy Schatz Alton This morning she drove away in the dark, headlights off. Forgotten headlights lighting up my worry. The monster comes roaring back: The one I left behind after her first year. Her neck will snap! The other driver won’t see her! Will they find my contact on the […]