I opted for quietness on my birthday. No big party. No big group of people. An introvert’s dream day. After sleeping in until 7 a.m., I puttered around happily on the computer for a while and then eventually got myself out the door to enjoy a (finally) sunshiney day–a day which followed two weeks of clouds, sleet, snow, rain and other variations of weather morosity.…

I met a guy once who was twenty-three. He was ornery and stubborn and cemented in his ways. His outlook was sour, and he had already grown a dozen decades older than his childhood. When he and I parted ways I thought, “That young man is so old.”…

This Saturday I will turn fifty-two. It seems a bit strange to think of turning fifty-two when yesterday I was just thirty. I know it is extra, ultra, uber cliché to ask this but I’ll ask it anyway,“Where in the world did my life go?”  It’s truly sobering to think that if I am blessed enough to live till I’m eighty, I’ve over two-thirds of…

The night before our family left to drive Nathan to Florida for his first year of college, he and I went out to run a few last-minute errands. Although I tried to act like it was just a regular night, I know that Nathan was aware of the swirl of my emotions–the sadness,  the joy, the pride, the tears teetering behind certain sentences as the…