What You Have to Set Free
Pine Cone Maturity / esu.edu Walking to my classroom today, I passed a cluster of pines. Beneath their branches, a perfect circle of pine cones posed like ornaments shaken from a Christmas tree. I stopped to consider what it might mean that a tree would drop all of its pine cones. It seemed like loss; […]
Flabbergasted! (A Student Laments Being Over-Scheduled)
Yesterday I had lunch with a college student who looks back on her grade school years with a certain regret. She won awards in three different sports, had a full schedule of activities, made great grades, and got into a wonderful college. She’s a triathlete. She’s a straight A student. I look at that life […]
Completely Unnecessary
The principal of my daughters’ elementary school knows their names. This elementary school has 495 students, and the principal learns their names by the end of the first week of school. I know. I’ve seen her walk in the halls saying “hello” to groups of students by name. I also know that learning my daughters’ […]
Am I a Husky or a Collie?
I recently walked in the woods with my neighbor and her Siberian Husky. While other owners let their dogs run free in the woods, she keeps hers tight and close on a strong leash. “I wish I could let him run free,” she says sadly. “Why can’t you?” I ask, watching other dogs bounding off […]
Trusting the Process (without Peeking)
I’m a horrible disaster in the kitchen. But God seems to teach me things in this place of flour and butter. This morning, I tried my neighbor’s delicious “popover” recipe. Their family loves popovers. They sprinkle lemon juice and powdered sugar atop the fluffy dish, and voila! Breakfast joy! Yesterday, she scribbled the recipe for […]
A Way to Stop Fighting
We woke up to screaming. All week, we’ve been listening to our daughters work out their conflicts. Lately, they’ve been fighting over everything: Whose turn? Whose portion? Whose toy? In church this morning, I asked another mother how she handles sibling fighting. Her answer surprised me. She said to teach my children that they aren’t […]
A Weekly Personal Reboot
Sometimes it helps me to think of my life as an operating system–like on my computer–that needs to reboot or reset every week. To reboot means to reload an operating system. You have to turn everything off, restart, and then launch the whole thing over again. You reset your machine. To reset means I […]
The Pure and Simple Happiness We Can Afford
At 7:45 AM, I push my daughter (the one who has the bad day mantra) on her tree swing. There’s a green chair next to me because the girls like to take a flying leap off of it, throw their legs around the swing, and see how high they can get. I can’t keep her […]
Breathing Deeply in the Froglet Phase
When you aren’t a tadpole anymore, but you still aren’t a frog, you’re a froglet. I’m reading a book about frogs to my children (how could we not after chasing a toad on Saturday?), and I read that, on the way to becoming a frog, the tadpole endures a curious in-between phase. The froglet phase. […]
Embrace Mediocrity
Sometimes I go around the room and ask students to introduce themselves by telling me what they were known for in high school. I learn so much about how students perceive themselves through the lens of other people. Valedictorian. Lead role in the school plays. Class President. Eagle Scout. These students have been groomed from […]