When you run into people in July, they usually ask, "How's your summer going?" I'm not quite sure how to answer this. Should I mention that my computer, my phone, my car, and my watch all went on the fritz about a week and a half ago? Should I share that my daughter's asthma seems to be flaring up because I took her off Advair, intending to find a homeopath for her, but never getting around to it? Should I say, "Fine. The kids are having fun at camp." Or should I share that we enrolled my mother in a hospice program last week?If it's a good friend, I tell them about my mother. Most people get a tragic look when they hear the word [...]

I was unlocking the padlock on our community garden when a car halted near the gate. There were a few young men, and one shouted out to me: "I've never understood how you can call it a 'community garden' and then put a lock on it." His tone was belligerent, possibly alcohol induced, since the garden is across from two bars and surrounded by neighbors who wanted a parking lot there instead of a garden. Still, I took the bait and tried to explain that "community" didn't mean "public" and that he was welcome to join the garden for ten dollars and some labor on work days. Although I thought I was being quite civil, the man in the passenger seat yelled "Yuppy bitch!" at [...]

We left Friends General Conference Gathering on Saturday morning and drove three hours north before stopping for a break near a shady Virginia picnic bench. As I stepped out of the car, my six-year-old son walked into my arms, his face red and contorted. Luke was sobbing so hard I thought he must have closed the car door on his finger, but when he finally pulled his face out of my shoulder, he wailed, “I don’t want to leave FGC. I miss my friends.” Then he kept crying, on and off for the rest of the day.Luke’s crying stirred many emotions in me: compassion for my son who was clearly heartbroken that his two new friends live hours away, recognition that I would also miss [...]

I'm now in Virginia at a gathering of Quakers from all over North America and beyond. Internet access has turned out to be rather hard to come by, so one of my spiritual practices for the week is to let go of the desire to check my e-mail frequently. Obviously blogging has been neglected as well.My main spiritual work, however, is to let go of bigger issues and my desire to know their outcomes. My mother is out of the hospital, but still losing weight. She says she now weighs sixty-eight pounds and is forcing herself to eat. Despite her frailty, she is still able to live alone, although maybe not for long. The physical therapists at the hospital said she was doing too well [...]

Yesterday I attended an elegant brunch on Manhattan’s Upper East Side at a literary club where Mark Twain was honored in his day. Our gathering celebrated the birthday and recent success of my friend Elizabeth Kostova, whose Dracula novel The Historian has made a huge splash in the publishing world. Aside from enjoying the mimosas, the interesting company, and the reunion performance of the Slavic Chorus Elizabeth belonged to at Yale, I got something else out of the day: a reminder to write.I have this experience periodically when I get together with productive writer friends. Hearing their joy in their work reminds me not to neglect my own. It’s not that I always need reminders. I have felt led to write for nearly twelve years, [...]

Yesterday my children had their last piano lessons of the school year. They both started in September—my son with the Suzuki method of instruction and my daughter with traditional, which has worked out well for me since they have lessons at the same time from different teachers at the music school. Because they learn different pieces, there has been little competition between them, though my daughter (who is eight) often wants to learn the pieces of her six-year-old brother.I’ve tried not to compare the two of them, though it’s been hard not to notice Luke’s good ear. After learning a piece, he likes to transpose it to another key, and the other day, he worked out how to play the theme song to Veggie Tales [...]

The children get out of school for the summer tomorrow morning, and camp doesn’t start for three and a half weeks. In the meantime, my mother is still in the hospital (but doing better), and my husband wants to go away for at least some of his vacation next week, assuming my mom is stable. I still hope to post here about once per week, but I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance. So it seems like a good time to take my friend Phil’s suggestion and tell people how to subscribe to this blog (or any blog you follow), so that anyone interested can be notified when I post something new without having to check back incessantly. Here’s Phil’s advice:Here's a link to [...]

I checked my eighty-two year old mother into a hospital yesterday. She’s been slowly losing weight, and the doctors haven’t found a cause, other than her lungs, which have been lousy for some time. Now that she’s down to seventy pounds, they want to admit her for more tests, even though they’ve been doing tests for months. As we were waiting for them to assign her a bed, I reminded her that the children and I are scheduled to go to a big Quaker gathering at the beginning of July, providing she’s well enough for us to leave town.“What are you going to learn there?” she asked with what I heard as a critical tone.“I’m taking a workshop on prayer,” I responded. “And the children [...]

My eight-year-old daughter was cranky when I picked her up from school yesterday. As usual, it took a few hours before the real reason emerged. It seems that two of her best friends are teaching her “how to act cool,” and yesterday’s lesson involved swishing her shoulders provocatively when she walked.“I just can’t do that, Mom,” Megan explained. “It just isn’t me.” The fact that boys might see her only exacerbated her main dilemma—how to be true to her self when her friends wanted her to be someone else.I know adults who have spent years trying to figure out who they really are after being raised to hide their true selves. It takes many weekend retreats or years of therapy, work that can be an [...]

Three converging activities have got me reflecting on how to practice the Quaker testimonies of Simplicity and Equality as a middle class parent: 1) we’re cleaning out our basement; 2) Bob Geldof is planning another rock extravaganza to help the poor in Africa; and 3) I’m reading God’s Politics by Jim Wallis. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, makes a compelling case that relieving global poverty is a moral issue that people of faith should be addressing with more urgency. He also offers some shocking statistics: Today some eight hundred million people around the world are malnourished. According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 30,500 children die every day in the developing world from hunger and preventable diseases. Almost three billion people, nearly half [...]