[Fortitude as an essential virtue which allows the ‘house’ of our soul to be kept in order for the presence of God; “s]uch fortitude is not the virtue of the dashing soldier. It means rather the virtue of the keeper of the fortress; the inconspicuous heroism that sits tight. And in the life of the spirit there is a great deal of sitting tight; of refusing to be frightened out of or decoyed away...
February 25-26, 2024 I habitually ask for bread when we eat out, which isn’t often, not because I want the bread as much as I do the sauce. It is not generally considered restaurant manners in our culture, although I’ve certainly done it, to full on lick a plate prior to it being cleared, but when so much of the flavor is trapped in streaks on the pottery set before me, one could be forgiven for...
February 5, 2024 I had an order to start fulfilling the same night I had to take my son to urgent care with a severe case of please don’t let it be pinkeye, a play for the preventative doctor’s note a parent seeks to keep their kid in school rather than being sent home mid-day by surprise. It wasn’t pinkeye. It wasn’t an infection either, deduced by another doctor brought...
January 14, 2023 I went hunting for ways to use up bananas that didn’t involve bread, and naturally found my way down a rabbit hole of puddings. I’m not southern, but I’ve lived around enough of them in DC to understand the value of a good banana pudding, and to know I wasn’t willing to work that hard. No buying Nilla wafers, no baking my own. I wanted something less than...
October 1, 2022 I’m the only soccer mom this morning. It’s windy and cold, fields wet with the leftovers of the early stages of Hurricane Ian and threatening more rain at any moment. “Yeah, the dads drew the short end of the stick today!” one of the other parents calls out cheerfully, as I join the handful of dads who have accompanied their six year olds to this morning’s game. “And not a lot of...
August 26, 2022 In advance of vacation, we can look forward to the time away as a kind of salvation from the normal life that has grown to feel wearisome, like a burden. We’ll leave our boring normal life, and experience a taste of real life, something beautiful and thrilling. We’ll rest, we’ll adventure, we’ll get good instagram photos. But when vacation ends, real life is waiting, collecting a...
July 2022 This is a sweet season with my five year old son, or as he explains it when introducing himself to church friends coming over for a potluck tonight, “I’ll just say I’m six, because I’m almost six.” He learned to read this year, practically overnight. We were on vacation for the school’s mid-winter break, a spontaneous trip where we packed almost no toys, and a handful of books. One day...
April 23, 2022 It’s Saturday, and I’m ready to tend my garden. We’ve been back since Tuesday evening from the third of four spring trips (accidentally running nearly back to back from March to early May, when I’ve been planning to take a very long nap). Trip three was a much planned and eagerly awaited vacation visiting friends overseas. But a few days in, fun and games came to an abrupt end due...
June 2, 2022 There’s beautiful silence for a little while. The kids are off somewhere playing contentedly, and in the space this creates, I become absorbed with something of my own. This feels like a down payment on the promise of future free time as we evolve out of this all-consuming stage of three kids so young and dependent. So tantalizing. For a moment I feel like I got this–no tablets, no...
February 14, 2022 Our baby is 18 months today. She’s our last, and my intention from the moment we decided to try for a third has been to be present. It is so tempting to jump ahead to a future stage that promises fewer demands on my time, a little more freedom, a little less work. It may be true–though nothing’s guaranteed–that it will be easier when she’s sleep-trained, cup-and-silverware...