I just celebrated a non-milestone birthday. I suppose at my age, reaching each new year is something of a milestone. I don’t usually tout a number, but if you want to figure it out, I was born one year after the nation of Israel was formed, an important backdrop of my life that I’m not pondering today.
I was trying to figure out a guitar strum to Bob Dylans’s song, “I Shall Be Released,” when I came across a video from the 1969 pilot of the Mama Cass Television Show. That show never went farther than this memorable pilot, but YouTube showed me a clip of Cass Elliot, best known for her alto voice in the Mamas and the Papas, singing the song I was researching…
Yesterday, I went to the garden section of Fred Meyer and bought the rest of the annuals I want to plant in my little garden. I’m trying to have a whole section of red flowers because I hear red attracts hummingbirds. I only have a couple of small beds in the back of my condo. I’ve tried to dedicate one to roses, though I may find a way to add the lavender plant my daughter sent me for Mother’s Day. The other bed will be red blossoms. I’ll get them in the ground today…
The Jewish community, my family, are still mourning the murder of the two Bibas babies, Kfir and Ariel and their brave mother, Shiri. We must bring home all the hostages!
The death of a young person is always tragic. This story, about a former college student of mine raises more questions than it answers. I can only hope she rests in peace.
“One Wedding and a Funeral” is an essay, representing a chapter of my upcoming memoir, about being the mother of Seattle cop during the days of the Defund Movement. It sadly tells the story of one young police officer who lost her life serving her community during this time (in a separate incident) and what that means to me as a cop mom.
Marion, Indiana is a struggling rust belt town up SR 69 from Indianapolis. The Mississinewa River is the prettiest geographic feature of the city, and Matter Park stretches for green miles along it. Marion was my home for seventeen years. Most days, I walked along the river, looking for blue herons standing on one leg in the shallows. Then I crossed over a little hill in the park to visit a memorial to the young soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wandered along the curved pathway and said a silent prayer for each of the dead boys represented by the eight plaques that line its bricked sidewalk.
The pain of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel has colored the lives of most Jewish people since that date. And yet, our family experienced the most blessed joy of all in the birth of our first grandchild. This essay tries to combine these two aspects of our lives.
“Confessions of an Eczema Mom” is the story of my relationship with my teenage daughter as we struggled together to deal with an unbearable disease. She is now a successful adult and I am proud of her management of her years both of physical pain and her ability to take care of her health so she can thrive.
Join me for a live Zoom reading and roundtable discussion with the authors showcased in Proud To Be, Vol 13, Thursday, January 23 @ 4:30PM Pacific Time | 6:30PM Central!