I asked mom for a dust rag, because those little chores were lingering undone in the season of her grief. Oh honey, you don’t have to dust, she said. No one likes to dust. That’s true, I said. So hurry up and give me the rag before I change my mind. I hate dusting and…
At 11:30 the teenagers filled the hotel room next to mine, and it seemed only a thin shower curtain hung between me and their raucous chatter and laughter. I felt like a crotchety old lady who wanted to go bang on their door with my cane. You young people keep it down! But I took…
Lovies, they call them, and I think one of them is named Frank, the duck. She can hold seven of them at one time, even though her little arms are only one year old. Mom and I sit quietly in the bedroom. Somehow she finds a way to tuck in her 45-year-old daughter –grabbing the…
One of the not-fun activities of the week has been tackling the paperwork. You should have seen my mom’s eyes when the mail came on Saturday and she added yet another envelope to the stack she says she has been putting off until tomorrow. So Monday morning I went with her to the VA, where…
I stopped in Butte because I just had to stretch my legs. There’s a really nice Herberger’s in Butte, Montana, and I managed to walk around the store without opening my purse. But then I called Matt when it was time to get back on the road. So, how do I get back on the…
It’s twelve hours –around the lake and Flathead cherry orchards. Through Missoula where we lived in poverty for five months during early marriage –hate that town. An overnight in Bozeman and nabbing my girl from Montana State for a hotel slumber party. Turn at the oil refinery in Laurel. Grumble at the Welcome to Wonderful…
I was in one aisle of JoAnn’s Fabrics looking for magnets, and I could hear a mom with her toddler in the next aisle. He was making barely intelligible comments about everything, and she was sweetly responding to whatever he said, as if he were an adult engaging her in rich conversation. It made me…
I pulled into the place where I go to pretend I’m serving my family homemade food and fresh vegetables –thank you, Panda Express. One of the parking places had a 42-ounce soda cup sitting right in the middle of it. Who would leave that sitting there? When I came out of the restaurant I argued…
I war with the boys who like the living room to be on the cave-ish side of things–curtains pulled and nary a lamp string pulled. Hands on hips, I stand before them and say, How can you boys stand this! (Rhetorical.) I throw open curtains and switch on every lamp available. They groan like I’ve…
I breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth, as I scribbled my name on the Visa receipt for that boy’s prom tuxedo. And I had to get air the same way when he brought his six feet down the stairs looking like this… I buried my face in that royal blue vest and…
There is a wonderful quiet that happens after the 3:00 bell, when I sit at my desk grading papers. A few days ago I had the windows open, and during that half an hour after school I smelled the rain and heard sheep bleating from the vo-ag field across the way. Maybe you’re a country…
I snagged a glorious 20 minutes on the phone with a dear friend yesterday, while she chewed on a Costco dog and I inhaled a Subway flatbread pizza. The cuisine of busy working moms. We talked about our broken mommas –hers with more busted ribs than a person can count on one hand, thanks to…
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