1950 Jim and I sat in the backseat, our faces out opposite windows. The wind dried our sweat into salty white stains. Daddy was sick, so our parents had pulled a tiny Airstream to Arizona for a virus-free winter. We packed into that  trailer like canned sardines. Daddy ran a driving range and gave golf lessons. Money was tight. […]

My son Anthony sent a text last week. “Leaving San Francisco now.” Their move to rural New York had been planned for many months, so that was no surprise. I wanted to write back: “Watch out for snow in the mountains. Watch out for twisters in the plains. Don’t get too tired. Don’t speed. Don’t let […]

“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.” ~Etty Hillesum I wake up and roll over. My bed vibrates like a drum—thump, thump, thump. Willow’s thick […]

The Greek Goddess Hecate has a witchy reputation—wild broomstick rides in the night, warts on her nose, and poison brews, but it wasn’t always like that. In ancient Greece, she was a revered, beautiful Goddess associated with the changing moon. She was the Light within the Dark, ruling transitional or liminal spaces, crossroads, twilight, thresholds, dreams, and […]

Soon after our son David was born in 1970, my husband’s mom gave me a small battered box. Inside, wrapped in crumpled tissue paper, I found a yellowed christening dress with the lace still in good shape. “You’ll need it for the baby’s christening,” Virginia said. “Vic wore it when he was baptized. A baptism? Vic and […]

“Give my son a kiss from me,” my mother-in-law Virginia whispers. “OK, I will,” I say as I give her hand a squeeze. She wants to kiss the child who was the center of her world. There’s no use saying her 67-year-old son died in 2008. For years, she hated God for what “he took from her,” but she rarely […]