Malaise, n. a vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness,lethargy, or discomfort. If I remember correctly, my younger sister once had a gerbil which she named "Malaise." It would have been somewhere around junior-high time for her, and she acquired the gerbil during a period of, well... malaise. If I remember correctly, our cat dragged that gerbil backward out of the cage by its tail … Continue reading The Death of Malaise
Category: Recovery
His Worst Week, His Best Week. Same Week.
Life has its ups and downs---true for all of us. But magnify those altitude-adjustments by whatever mysterious hormonal algorithm determines teenage moods, and we're talking about emotional topography to rival Idaho's Sawtooth mountains. Having said that, though, teenagers' experience of life isn't any less real for the fact that they're hormonal or young. And sometimes … Continue reading His Worst Week, His Best Week. Same Week.
Home to Roost
Never mind the "Secret Lives of Bees"--I'm intrigued by the Secret Lives of Kids. I would never guess what's going on in my own kids' heads if I didn't chatter and play with them. Case in point: our 11-year-old son, Christian, has been harboring a long-standing wish to own chickens. I had no idea. He … Continue reading Home to Roost
Lucky 13 for One Mommy
The last time Mother's Day was on the thirteenth (my lucky number!) was the year 2001--my first Mother's Day as a Mommy. It was also the day we baptized my son Christian, wearing the same christening-gown I'd worn twenty-six years earlier. My parents have shared it with many family friends in the intervening years, and … Continue reading Lucky 13 for One Mommy
Dandelion Bouquet
To continue a theme of "coming out of the dark," I have to share my Roomie's post with you today. But let me first introduce you to my Roomie. Pepper and I met through some collaborative freelance work last year, and jokingly took to referring to each other as "roommates in a padded cell." We … Continue reading Dandelion Bouquet
…and Morning
Still reading Lamott, and here's her next gift to me: And this is God's own truth: the more often I cried in my room in Ixtapa and felt just generally wretched, the more often I started to have occasional moments of utter joy, of feeling aware of each moment shining for its own momentous sake. … Continue reading …and Morning
Nightmare
A blogging-friend commented the other day that my writing reminds her of another writer's, and (with that sense of shame peculiar to a bibliophile when she discovers there's something she hasn't read) I immediately downloaded Anne LaMott's Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. The action of downloading the book brought home to me, actually, how … Continue reading Nightmare