Misty, Watercolor Memories
Someone asked me today how I was. It was a casual question from a casual acquaintance. The kind of question in which the one who’s asking expects a “Fine, thanks. How are you?” But that’s not what I said. Instead, I awkwardly blurted, “My mom just died.” “I’m so sorry. We all go through that. […]
Life Lessons from My Eight-Year-Old Self
The autobiography I penned at age eight begins with this: How it all started… When I was young I had some troubles. I had started to grow up to be a very spastic child. Every time I got mad I held my breath until I passed out. My mom was scared. It is a handwritten […]
The Time We Have
I’m feeling a sense of desperation tonight. There’s not enough time. I’ve wasted it. I’ve squandered it. I’ve let too much of it pass by. A dear friend of mine says, “The time we have is the time we have.” I know what she means by it. We get what we get. We cannot make […]
Seesters
She turns 49 today. That hardly seems possible. I still remember her sitting at the kitchen table in our Weston Village apartment, layering her blue eye shadow as she gazed into her Clairol multi-light mirror. Styx played in the background as she flipped her bangs with a large-barreled curling iron and meticulously applied her shiny, […]
Brown County Memories
On the heels of a most wonderful Thanksgiving family reunion in Brown County, Indiana, I’ve been thinking a great deal about my childhood, my family, my sister, my cousins (pictured here), my grandparents. We’re a unique clan, the Andersons. Our individual personalities are as vast and different as the leaves in our beloved Brown County […]
NO!
One of my very favorite songs to listen to when the kids were younger was the catchy “They Might Be Giants” tune, “NO!” It opens with this: “No is no. No is always no. If they say no, it means a thousand times no.” Pretty good preparation for life, methinks. We face a lot of […]
Mixed Messages
Words are powerful. And sometimes tricky. And often times, they fail me, both in speech and in writing. I’m a dramatic girl, emotional, reactive, volatile. Sometimes I say things I shouldn’t; sometimes I write things I wish I hadn’t. When I was employed as the Executive Director of a beloved nonprofit, I once received a […]
All Kinds of Mothers
Mother’s Day is such a funny little celebration. Overpriced flowers, candies, brunches, matching kid outfits — all in honor of the one who birthed us. It’s a commonality we children carry… like birth, like death, there are inevitable things we share in the connectedness of our existence. Each of us has a mother. Perhaps we […]
A Homecoming
Ever since we moved to Mississippi in July, I’ve been floundering through my days, trying to make my way. I’ve been detached, untethered, a kite bouncing around in the wind, the child at the other end distracted and uninterested. This weekend, that changed. It was the Cotton District Arts Festival and Super Bulldog Weekend in […]
The Gift of Letting Go
When I write fiction, I write about relationships. Siblings, spouses, children, parents, friends. Our lives are shaped and molded by our relationships. And sometimes they can be tricky. So, I write about them to help illuminate what’s important, what’s universal, what we all struggle with, what we all sink into and find comfort in — […]