The holidays are going to seem a little different this year. Our plans have had to change due to the pandemic, and the reality is setting in as to how vigilant we still need to be. Last weekend we decided, as a family, that we were all going to stay put. Stiff regulations on how […]

Thanksgiving 2020.  Bittersweet top to bottom. It seems that the older I get the deeper my thoughts run.  Why are the tears always bubbling just under the surface? Even when I am so thoroughly happy. Wednesday I felt a pang of homesickness as I thought about the fact that normally we would have been heading […]

Every December I go through hoops decorating the house for Christmas. As the kids and I teetered on a ladder Thursday evening putting up Christmas lights on our front entrance, Jacob and I both looked at each other and asked, “Why?”  Do you know why? Jacob and I shook our heads and laughed a little, […]

My Mother is … The familiar face that emerges from the crowd when I feel uncertain. Mum is the truck that deliberately drives along the hedgerow, intent on her mission to deliver food to her family during fieldwork. She is the stern eye that met my 10-year-old glance when things got out of hand at […]