A few nights ago Megan had a hard time going to sleep. When I asked what was wrong, she explained that she couldn’t stop thinking about death and dying. The next morning at breakfast she said, “It would help if there was less talking about dying, especially with you and Daddy.” I guess between me talking about my mom and Tom talking about his new hospice job, we’ve been freaking her out.I don’t believe in shielding children from death, but it is hard to know what to tell them. They have such practical concerns. “I hope there’s a tire swing and a jungle gym in heaven,” said Luke, about thirty seconds after Megan asked us to stop talking about it. Then at 6:30 this morning [...]

I was half asleep when my six-year-old Luke climbed into bed with me this morning. When I finally stopped pretending to be asleep and cracked my eyes to look at him, Luke announced, “There are watches you can set back in time, but there are no watches that you can set back to the time of castles.” Apparently he had been pondering this and was just waiting for me to wake up so he could tell me. Later at breakfast, he added that you couldn’t set watches back to the time of dinosaurs either.The idea of setting back time is appealing. This summer when my lap top got fried by lightening I spoke to Hewlett Packard technicians in India who guided me through various unsuccessful [...]

At a committee meeting the other night I said, “I need help” with surprising emotion. Although I was speaking in relation to the work of the committee, I later realized that my plea for help went much deeper. My mother is slipping steadily, but slowly. There is no way to predict how much help she will need, when, or for how long, and I find that uncertainty stressful. In the meantime, I am spending way too much time on the Apartheid course I am teaching at the University of the Arts this fall. As a result, I’m only getting a few hours per week to write, less than I’ve had since Luke was in nursery school. When I have written, it’s been for the blog, [...]

On Sunday I learned there’s a beautiful house for sale on one of my favorite streets in Philadelphia, and that started a whole chain of thought about whether we need a bigger house, whether now is a good time to buy (when our current house has tripled in value, but the prospective house’s neighborhood hasn’t gone up as much), or a bad time (because of my mother’s illness and my total lack of time).My husband Tom wants to renovate our current house to be a model of renewable energy, which I’m all for, except that it doesn’t solve the problem of having enough space either in our house or in the back yard. In truth, I care more about the yard. I’ve put a lot [...]

This morning I began thinking of clichés to describe my recent mindset: “hanging on by a thread” and “at the end of my rope” came to mind. I fancied myself dangling from some psychological precipice, summoning all my might just to avoid falling into a rage because I can’t get time to write until the children go back to school in 120 hours, not that I’m counting.Mostly the day was fine, not nearly as tragic as the clichés I had been rehearsing. More like treading water. Then, during an afternoon drive, Luke’s playdate taught him how to inhale buggers into the back of your nose so they can slide down your throat. “That way you can eat your buggers without tasting them,” explained Luke’s friend. [...]

Tom and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary a few days ago, which has got me reflecting on how marriage has changed my life. There are the little adaptations—like not eating curry so much anymore since Tom doesn’t like it—as well as the seismic changes, like parenthood, which I wouldn’t have tackled alone. In fact it’s hard to separate marriage and motherhood in my mind, since I got pregnant only six months after Tom and I strolled down a grassy aisle in the Endless Mountains, an event that literally feels like a lifetime ago. At the time of our wedding I was writing a book about discerning a call to marriage as a spiritual path. While I still agree with the ideas in Listen with [...]

Yesterday, during a rushed trip to the library, a book title grabbed my attention: The Hurried Woman Syndrome: A Seven-Step Program to Conquer Fatigue, Control Weight, and Restore Passion to Your Relationship. Although I don’t have time to read all seven steps of any program, I grabbed the book and proceeded to skim bits of it at red lights on our drive downtown. I was annoyed by the time we hit the Art Museum.I’m sure reading at red lights must be a symptom of Hurried Woman Syndrome. I can certainly relate to the problem of feeling overwhelmed with things to do, and I agree with the author that chronic stress is bad for our health. What annoyed me was the author’s implication that the stresses [...]

For our first few days in Vermont, I found myself inhaling sharply, like a child with asthma, my shoulders at my ears with tension. Then, as if by instinct, I blew out the tension, making the sound our air mattress makes when a child pulls the plug and then flops down on it. This wasn't a planned relaxation exercise, just my body's natural response when it finally got the chance to breathe deeply after days of non-stop stress.From our tent we could see the Adirondack Mountains folded in misty layers across Lake Champlain. The view itself was healing. We could also see a lot of sky--clear blue during the day, streaked with pink in the evening, star-filled at night. A wide sky puts things in [...]

After two days of frantic preparations, we are leaving for our annual trek north to Vermont and the Adirondacks. In addition to cancelling the mail and the newspaper and bringing the goldfish to our neighbor's house for safekeeping, this year I also had a long list of errands to do for my mother to make sure she will be absolutely fine in our absence. I think she will be, but still I felt sad and guilty when we said goodbye last night. She yelled, "I love you all" down the stairs of her apartment, as Megan and Luke raced for the street, something my mother doesn't say that often.And so we set off with a little remorse and a lot of uncertainty. Tom had hoped [...]