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When my son was six and about to turn seven, he confessed that he didn’t want to become seven because it seemed like too much work.  Even though adults tend to view all of childhood as easy and fun, I knew what he meant.  Seven was the end of first grade and the beginning of […]

I will never forget a comment that an older person made to me once a few years ago:  “Just wait until you’re no longer young and pretty.  You’ll love becoming invisible.” I was horrified by her words, because she seemed to revel in the idea of becoming invisible as you get older.  She also seemed […]

I love the metaphor of life being like a container of rocks.  If you fill it with small rocks, there is no space for the large rocks.  It’s only when you put the large rocks in first, that there is room for the small rocks in the remaining space.  And yet how many of us […]

Whenever I go hiking with my parents on Black Cap Mountain in New Hampshire, they point out the colored blazes on the trail, which remind us where we are and whether we are on the right path.  I recently learned that the literal term “trail blazing” refers to the process of marking a path with […]

So many mothers today want to be perfect, to do everything right, as though parenthood is a series of difficult gymnastic skills, that if you only try hard enough, you can land perfectly for those Olympic judges watching. I don’t know how this evolved. It certainly wasn’t present in the sixties and seventies when many women drank, not […]

Every year our local public school has a day long carnival that raises a lot of money for the PTO.  While I have volunteered in other ways in the past, this is an event that I try to avoid, between the crowds and the screaming kids with cotton candy in their hair. A friend once […]