Robin Dodd Photography

I guess we all have this idea that if we ask really nice over and over and over they'll remember all the little  lectures and inane things we beg them to remember, from how to load the dishwasher properly to "whose shirt is this on the refrigerator?" It's a part of the leaving. Or the preparing to leave. Sometimes they hear us, they do, but most of the time they don't. So we say it again.  There's always this nagging guilty feeling, followed by a pick up your bootstraps and get over it, one that makes me feel that maybe I'll make it through motherhood unbroken, even though it's been almost fifteen years. I was listening to a podcast the other day. It was early and I was watering the horses in the barn. For a full minute, I stood with my cheek on Dodger's, the horse who also remembers the 80's, we have alot of conversations on Tuesday mornings. An author was discussing her memoir and was quoting Anne Truitt, and her feelings about mot...

       I  just wanted to talk a little bit today about sending your kids off to college and the great unknown. It's got to be such an emotional time. My sister and I were having a conversation last night about how when your kids are little it can physically exhausting, so back to school day gives you a  little thrill and then when they become teenagers and hopefully they aren't  emotionally exhausting you this week, sending them to school isn't as fun, you want summer to hang on. Of course you may be ready to put on a pencil skirt and smoke a few cigarettes while drinking a strong gin martini who knows.. .the hormonal roller coaster with the teen is mysterious, we've all been there.     I've recently been slapped in the face with the not so irrational fear of Mariama and Holly learning to drive. ( in a year and a half, but it's there...) Just knowing that I manage the day to day traffic some days  with more road rage than others and ...

                                                Today BY  BILLY COLLINS If ever there were a spring day so perfect,            so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze                 that it made you want to throw                            open all the windows in the house        and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,                   indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,           a day when the cool brick paths               and the garden bursting with peonies           seemed so etched in sunlight         ...