The Mothership

This woman and I have parted ways before…   The first time she was gone for a week at camp.   When she left for college.   When she moved out of our apartment and married her husband (how dare she).   When I moved to New Jersey   the countless vacations she dare to take without me.  Each time I am sad. I deal with my sadness in many ways but more than likely my sadness moves with tears. Tears as I sit and think about the countless ways she has supported me most recently and pretty much all my life. Tears of the fun adventures we have been on and now take our families along too. Tears of the times I dared be upset with her. Tears of how she is ALWAYS putting other people before herself. I can’t even remember the last time she said, “no! That’s a bad idea.” to me because she is always along for the shenanigans.  She is just lovely.    She is leaving me again. And the tears are rolling. They have been rolling for weeks. It stings a lit...

To my friend whose life has changed since Thanksgiving...hearing your voice speak THAT word... such an ugly word; chemo...cancer. And they both mean the same thing essentially...poison in the body. And yet, might I say, you are NOT changed for the worst. This disease is only that, a disease.  You have NOT let it define you! I will never know a day in your shoes, and nor will I ever pretend to know what your mind, heart, and body have been through. But there are some things you have taught me these past 7 months. You have taught me... there is absolutely NO excuse to not getting my laundry folded...not even the fitted sheets. my excuses for NOT exercising carry no weight...they are just empty words. what humility looks like...accepting and receiving help is not easy - at least I know not for you and me. how smart and clever you are. I knew it before, but the amount of information you keep in your head - even after children and chemo - is astounding. that children are const...

I was gardening in my flower bed the other day planting a new flower.  As I was digging, I ran into a root from an old bush that I pulled out and relocated to a different spot when Luke was a toddler.  I remember so fondly his little hands helping me pull and pull so hard to bring the bush out from under the soil that we both fell backward and just laughed (that's right, just like a Hallmark movie) .  I can hear in my mind his little "umph"...and "woah!" that his little voice made.  I'm so thankful for that memory because it speaks right to Luke's nature of serving and helping even at a young age and it's just a great memory for me as a young mommy. I'm also thankful that I had a bush to pull out. It meant we had a yard to maintain and it needed no attention for the first few years. But pulling it out and relocating it meant there was room for something new to grow.  I wasn't getting rid of the bush, I was simply putting it in a ...