Birthday Girl
Dear Mary Claire, Twelve years! It’s a bit much to wrap my brain around. You arrived on this earth twelve years ago — a beautiful bundle of pink to shake up our baby blue home. I was the only one who knew you were a girl. Dad didn’t want to know — he always preferred […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Journey
Life is about the journey, isn’t it? No matter how strongly we have our heart set on the destination, it’s the journey that offers us the growth, the substance, the unshakable truth. We’re sailing unknown seas right now. Some might call it the journey of our lives. When I look back across the years, I […]