In With the New
I didn’t send Christmas cards this year. I haven’t sent them in a few years. We took family pictures when we first arrived in Mississippi, and I still have 200 of them sitting in a fat photo envelope. We were all nearly three years younger then. The kids were shorter, my hair was longer and […]
Preparing for Takeoff
He’s the kid who used to hide behind a chair and grunt, “Leave me alone!” while he worked on yet another Pull-Up. We were fairly certain we’d never get him completely potty trained. Discussing parallelograms and rhombi at age 2? You bet. Willingly choosing to use the toilet for its intended purpose? Not so much. […]
The Year of Being
365 days. That’s a lot of time. Time to think, time to reflect, time to laugh, to cry, to fall to your knees, to dust yourself off and start anew. It’s a great many sunrises and sunsets, dinners and lunches, books checked off the “must read” list, novels written and edited. It’s one more school […]
Wherever I’m With You
Home. It’s a loaded word, isn’t it? Chock-full of slippery semantics. I’m a native Hoosier. Grew up in Greenfield, went to school both in Bloomington and in Muncie, raised my kids in Zionsville. In July, we moved The Tribe to Starkville. Now we call Mississippi home. Here’s the thing. Home is where my family is. […]
Smarty Smart Pants
We’ve been waiting patiently — and then not-so-patiently — for George to be tested for the gifted and talented program at his Mississippi school. He’s never been a kid who loves school, but in Starkville, he’s been doubly miserable. “Everyone talks too much.” “We’re always in trouble because the whole class acts up.” “We lost […]
Half-Full
The ever-elusive “They” say bad things happen in threes, right? Whew. That means we’re good to go for awhile. Within the past two weeks, we’ve had a financial kick in the shins. First — as you’ve already read — our beloved washing machine kicked the bucket. She had to be replaced immediately. Life without a […]
Adventures with Shmee: Part One
My first Starkville visitor left after we dined at Mugshots last night. We drank our final beers, toasted with our last shared glasses of red, sneered at the LSU fans sitting at the bar. She ate veggies, I ate fries. We hugged. I didn’t cry. You know why? Because she gave me a new set […]
One Step Forward…
Two steps back. That’s how a journey often works, huh? At least in my experience that’s how the Willis Tribe rolls. We’re operating at a 50% happiness level right now. Chris is loving his new gig. He’s relishing the opportunity to pontificate, to think of intriguing questions and then to find the answers. He’s in […]
Speed Bump
We hit it today. Our first stumbling block. I was very curiously watching the man in front of me in the carpool line hock long streams of yellow tobacco spit into the elementary school grass when George came out to greet me. “I want to move back to Indiana,” he announced as he climbed into […]
Lesson Plans
They marched like little soldiers into their strange, new, unfamiliar buildings on Monday morning. In khaki shorts and button-down polos, they looked tidy, put-together, and more than a little bit nervous. I felt like I was throwing them to the wolves. And when I anxiously picked them up on Monday afternoon — maneuvering blindly through […]