My Blogs

Daughter on Duty: Walking with My Mother in the December of Her Life

In the autumn of my life I have moved back to my soul home to walk for a while with my mother－born in 1916－and learn from her as she comes to the end of years. This blog is about our walk, at least from my viewpoint. It is about the frustration and humor of living with the old-old, the déjà vu of living in my childhood home and being the child again and the sadness of being the parent of my parent. It is about the education about being old-old in a youth worshiping country and a land of law-makers who apparently think they will never be old-old. It is about the hope for a better way and better understanding for and by the generations coming up. And it is about personal growth as I embrace the privilege of being on this walk with my mother.

My View from the Garden (This blog has been discontinued as of May 12, 2013. I invite you to visit and read back posts.)

At the end of Lent 2007, on my own for the first time, I purchased a fully-renovated, 58-year-old, not-so-big house with over-grown, neglected gardens. Given little to do inside the house, other than put color to the beige walls, I fell in love with restoring the gardens to their former glory. Five years later a restlessness settled over me again, and I declared that garden in North Carolina finished and set my face to the gardens in the Pacific Northwest, my soul home. The journey continues to discover what new gardens can teach me; gardens including the mountains and the rainforest, the ocean and the lakes, the valleys and the islands. I write to bring up from the depths what I know. I write to learn to see, really see, the beauty in the world. I share it with you in the hope that it will spark you to engage in a dialogue with yourself and with others; and to join me in living with courage, with integrity, and with an open spirit.