In The Heights & Christmas Lights

I’m home! Where people come People go Let me show all of these People what I know There’s no place like home! … I’m home! Where it’s a hundred in the shade But with patience and faith We remain unafraid I’m home! You hear that music in the air? Take the train to the top…

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What Mary Didn’t Know

Though I stand by what I wrote in this post from two years ago, “What Mary Knew,” it’s not the whole story. Read that, if you haven’t, then come back here to the follow-up, as I explore one of my least favorite Christmas songs, about one of my favorite women ever.  And His father and mother…

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Of Purple Parties and Fitting In

“The people you love will change you The things you have learned will guide you And nothing on Earth can silence The quiet voice still inside you And when that voice starts to whisper Moana, you’ve come so far Moana, listen Do you know who you are?” from Disney’s Moana The dining room windows are dark,…

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Lest We Forget

Take up our quarrel with the foe! To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high! If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. from “In Flanders fields,” John McRae I was twenty-five years old before I heard of…

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Using the Car

I’ve never much liked driving. I realize that this probably puts my American citizenship at risk—a dangerous thing to do at the moment—since automobile affection seems stitched into the fiber of our national being. We’re the nation of the Model T, of giant parking lots and the infinite chain of interstates, of drive-ins, drive-throughs and…

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The Time To Be Slow

Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening, like a tree which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them,…

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Ideal World Problems

My phone knows I’m pregnant. Like many moms my age, along with the time-consuming social media and practical tools, my cell phone is currently host to a handful of pregnancy-related apps. My hospital has its own app reminding me about upcoming appointments, and in a moment of uncertainty earlier this week I downloaded a contraction…

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American Girls

I’m just going to say that “nesting” made me do it. Nesting, that biological imperative. That habit we share with creatures who spend their last days of gestation preparing a home for their coming little ones. That urge to go to Target just to look at small clothes and different shapes of pacifiers. That millionth…

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Mini Pumpkins and Not-Forever Houses

It was a great day when I discovered that Trader Joe’s sells small pumpkins for 69 cents. America and Germany are tied in their veneration of pumpkins. In Germany, I could go to the market and find five kinds of pumpkins suitable for making various types of soup. That’s pretty much what you do with…

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The First Day of No School

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance….

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