Category Archives: Home

A new curve leads to a fresh path

As I sat in my boat recently, fishing for the first time in five years, I felt a peace and sense of ownership I didn’t know I had within me. Not just ownership of the boat, but ownership of my own time and emotions, and of my decisions. The boat and I have a long […]

Making peace with the silence that death brings

  My son-in-law Daryl and I were in my late husband’s woodworking shop on a recent evening doing a little project. Well, Daryl was doing the project — I was supervising and my stepdaughter was getting dinner. Daryl was making a brace to stabilize my dogs’ portable exercise pen I acquired to use at camp […]

Healing is an act of courageousness

I want to talk to you about courage. Not the kind where you rescue a stranger from a burning building, when fear and sheer adrenaline drive you. And not the kind where your convictions overrule your better judgment and make you stand up to a bully. Those kinds of courage are bursts from a state […]

Living with the wilder side of my life

I’m thinking I need to stay home more often or I could be in danger of losing control over my own property. I’ve been on the road a lot these past few months for various dog-related reasons — flyball tournaments (dog relay racing), conformation shows (think scaled down Westminster), and a couple of field events […]

Finding beauty where you are planted

Our neighborhood is blessed with road construction at the moment. It’s not actually the road that’s being constructed — it’s a sidewalk that stretches from Hermon Village to Hermon High School. While waiting not so patiently in a line of cars to get into my driveway so I can let out my dogs at lunchtime […]

Being in a feisty state of mind

  The thing about widowhood is that from the moment it happened to me, I felt like I had fallen on this conveyer belt that just carried me through life as unwilling cargo from day to day. No control over my destiny. No control over what had just happened to me. No control over a […]