This day is laden with expectation. Even for this blog: how can I get it just right, pleasing every reader? It’s too much to manage, so I don’t. I step aside and let this suffice. The garbage truck is on our street. My husband and I woke early, and he remembered then to put our […]
Category: Gratitude
Today’s Angle
What angle shows the blooms best? How will you know that I’ve had these flowers for a week and they’re just now they are starting to sing? Yet I’m not a photographer. I can’t capture the way these flowers make me feel. How every new turn we take highlights ideas we didn’t see at first. […]
Unclench
My deadlines are done for today/my mind unwinds the thread of the storyline/my muscles unclench from the need to help my brain find the right words/how to ease into quiet time after the noise? I hold myself so tight/it’s only in the release that I see my stance/I push articles up and out from within […]
The Dance
The Dance by Nancy Schatz Alton I fold over myself into who I used to be: if we didn’t like ghosts, we wouldn’t become parents 6, 16, 22, 13, 8: our lives illuminated by those who come after. It’s a song we keep singing while forcefully dropping the storyline. I see me back […]
Teens: The Fire and the Flood
An Ode to the Teens “You’re the fire and the flood” -Vance Joy Teens are a revelation and a joy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. They are the fire and the flood. The burning and the waking, the quaking and the trees (growing leaves) that shake our house. Their leaves are red and orange […]
They Come & Go
They Come & Go by Nancy Schatz Alton I sing praise to what remains: the living room lit by tiny lights my family talking me returning. All the phrases that help remind me of what remains these phrases swirl & catch & hit the light. it could have been otherwise there was always […]
What’s In The Silence But A Song?
What’s in the silence but a song? by Nancy Schatz Alton Every day I set up a space. I put slants on either side. I wish for the words to flow for my sentences to reach your ears with the rhythm that I feel as I listen to my daughters sing alone or together in […]
This Resting Place
This Resting Place by Nancy Schatz Alton It’s possible to know what I want: a long walk warm coffee fresh expensive pastries cut & shared a weekend spent with intention: walk, coffee, eat write, yoga, no shopping, a little sorting reading. It’s possible to relish where I’m at now: a long way into parenthood […]
Empty hands
I read a quote once that I can’t recall, but the meaning of it has stuck with me. It’s a quote about how the people who show up are enough. And not in the way of your best friend showing up on your darkest days, but more about how the people who populate our days […]
Giving Thanks
“To feel close to you is good.” -David Hernandez Every time I hear kids’ laughter in my house or see Liz’s lips curl up into a full, joy-filled smile, I think we did it: we made a home. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!