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This is the first year I can remember, ever, when I did not feel angst about the short days, the early darkness. This was the first winter solstice when I wished for more night, when I didn’t want to hurry up the lengthening of the daylight. I felt deeply calm before the turning point, and now I feel how much is coming and will potentially move through me– career and curiosity, love and friendship– I feel all the waiting, all the expanding energy here in the underground seed

What have you locked away? What have you stolen from yourself and hidden so that you wouldn’t long for anything wild, anything unknowable from the safety of the shore? What do you know and what have you always wanted without explanation? It’s there– very close. Waiting for you to breathe air into its lungs. Waiting for you to run into the water and swim down, down, down without worrying about how you’ll get back to the surface. You know what you know. You don’t have to “show

All the old fears gather around the table. Some of them are defiant, daring me to say something. Some only look down, trying the old trick of being invisible by not seeing themselves. There are so many here that I look around– we look around– who is the hostess? Who is the Grown Up, anyway? Silence. Eyes meet across the table. But surely someone… someone must know what’s actually going on here? The right way to do it? The way to be Good, or at least Better? More silence, and

My little house smells like cardamom and almonds and coconut oil and maple syrup and oats because I just baked a pan of granola. It’s the first time I’ve baked granola since I moved out of my other house, which was also a bed and breakfast– which is to say since I left my marriage and set out into a hopeful and nearly blank new world less than eleven months ago. Making granola feels important, because it is. I still know the recipe by heart. A recipe I came across or came up

I’m being cozy with myself. Curious, and gentle. Quiet, on this day without work or much for obligations. I dropped my son off at school. (He was wearing a double-breasted coat, gray wool with a brilliant fuscia lining. It was a lost-and-found offering from a friend. I love that he loves it, and that I am able, in spite of all my acculturation, to let it be irrelevant that the coat was designed, tailored, and sold with a female market in mind, not a nearly 12-year-old boy). I

A friend offered to dig a hole for the apple tree I haven’t yet acquired but want to plant on this new-to-me property, and it was the nicest thing I’ve felt in a long while. By “nicest,” I mean it moved me. It shook my heart in the best way, rattling loose some rusted parts I haven’t paid attention to. I mean that it was a moment of complete trust and kindness and connection– a full body intimacy that didn’t fall into any Instagram-worthy category. It was all within. It was i

I took my Parents Forever course today. It’s not a thing I would have signed up for if it hadn’t been mandatory. (Live in MN? Have a kid? Getting a divorce? You’ll be putting in eight hours to make sure you have a basic level of skills.) It was a good program. I picked it because it was virtual and created by the University of Minnesota, and they seem like smart folks. I think I could have passed the quizzes without the course, but it only took a fraction of the eight hour a

I don’t know why, if someone’s having a hard time, I give them food. It’s not unique to me by any means, but it isn’t something that I remember as a part of my family culture as I grew up, though maybe I’m wrong: our mom always wondered if we were borderline hypoglycemic, and there was a time I told one sister’s (very new) husband that he had about thirty seconds to get her a granola bar before everything melted down. But food wasn’t how I thought of solving problems or flatt

I brought my guitar to band practice and played it. This matters because: it wasn’t hard, it wasn’t to be a Real Musician. It was because I had a song to share and this was the most obvious and efficient means. And it’s extra fun because this is the guitar my very gifted fiddler-luthier boyfriend fixed up and gave me so many years ago, and which I learned to play after we broke up (mostly) so I would stop falling for musicians. (Hey, I love that talent, but it doesn’t have an

The snorkeling goggles have been playing musical chairs (too small, already have a pair, etc, etc), and most recently have been renting a corner of the counter at work, waiting to go home to a younger kid. But thank goodness for the delays of real life: today Pat put them on. That’s all. That’s it. You had to be there. He didn’t do anything funny or say anything in particular. He just wore a pair of child’s snorkeling goggles and it was the best thing I saw all day. #DaysDeli

What a thing to not overcook the sirloin. To mince the garlic and slather the steak in last year’s tomato butter (forgotten in the freezer but still so damn good!). To have no white wine and so deglaze the pan with a nice dry cider (brewed just down the road in Duluth), and then to drink the rest of it with dinner. To add Gouda in thin shavings, hunks of an heirloom tomato sawed off without regard for looks, and top it all with a few small basil leaves, plucked from the bouqu

Lake trout caught by da local boys. Wild rice harvested by my sister (last year’s; this year’s is being processed). Beets and chick peas with tarragon and sage. Squash with my family’s maple syrup. And strawberry crumble made in my granny’s tartlet pans. — until all of us were stuffed, “gloriously bloat,” to quote I Capture the Castle . — until I was almost too full for a cup of the homemade, hand-picked tea. — all the way up to falling asleep under the stars, the sky bright

I made a list of what I miss today, and it made room to take a breath, be Here. I discovered, in the archeological dig that is my relationship with myself, that I don’t feel at home in my life yet. That it feels like I’ve moved to a foreign country and nothing has settled into its groove, or at least nothing in the kitchen. And that was good, too. Understanding and having a Beginning-Middle-End can be addictive, but it also drops an anchor: Ohhhh! That’s what’s going on under

I baked a squash and washed all the dishes. Listened to a little romantic accordion on a Café Paris playlist before returning to the combination of quiet and conversation. The house was warm and smelled cozy. The kitchen still awaits such a facelift, such a rearranging to match what I see in my mind. But it’s a good home, and a good feeling to be at home here; to wash the floor and wipe the counters and fluff the pillows not for anyone else but myself. And then to share it, n

Sleeping on the deck, futon mattress pulled off the frame, plenty of blankets piled up against the chill of the September night, bright stars high above (but feeling close and friendly). The moments when the whole body is open and feeling everything– joy, delight, wonder, fatigue, warmth, cold– feel holy. Being one being, all the too-often-independent parts merged together, and then expanding that connection and permeation to the whole night sky, to the animal-vegetable-mine

Band practice with the upright bass! Oh my god, it was so fun– to have that bounce and depth and rhythm. To be three instead of two, which does some kind of magical math equation to the sense of potential and possibility. To be not perfect together. To drink beer (even if mine was only metaphorical). To make plans for more songs just by me singing a verse and then Ben jumping in with the slappiest bass lines. I swear we were having fun, even though Jon and Ben seem to be lase

Acorn squash with nutmeg and maple syrup. The first day of 6th grade. Sun and clouds and rain and wind and a wet-blue sky. And not just one cup but two of tea in bed with a book long before nightfall, and finally, a cozy kitten coming in out of the dark. #DaysDelight

I sat by the lake on the East Bay then lounged. Then became, like the line of water and sky, more and more horizontal; like the rocks, nearly silent; like the water, far more than the calm surface. (Reader, I mean that I slept, cheek pressed againsty arm, very possibly snoring for any passing tourist to hear, with my belly pressing against sun-warmed pebbles. But I also mean all of that about the merging and communion and deep water ecosystem). This time of year feels like Su

Good questions ( really good questions) asked by a friend (a really good friend). Space to answer. Space to describe all the ways I felt I couldn’t get to the answers. Space to hear the guess/scrying/hunch about myself. And then the space to feel it all. To be in it and present without the urge to hide or run away or turn it all into a flippant joke– The gift of true, honest, human conversation. #DaysDelight