Exploring the Third Season of Life

Notes from Vanaprastha

Reflections on Faith, Nature, and Writing

Recent Posts

Anniversaries

Anniversaries

This is a week of anniversaries for Keith and me: birth, death and wedding. We celebrate our 5th today with thoughts of how far we've come in partnership. Signs of success are easy to see: a house renovated and mountain house nearing completion, job changes with...

The Empty Chair

The Empty Chair

On the 10th anniversary of Gretchen's suicide, I am reading Kay Redfield Jamison's book Night Falls Fast. I admit that my quest for knowledge is somewhat of an equivocation. Although I seek understanding of my stepdaughter’s struggle and its impact on her father...

Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice

Today in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun rises high in the sky then stands still according to the Latin derivation of solstice. But it is overcast here, so I revert to memory. I see my father presiding at the head of the table, gazing out the dining room window...

Father’s Day

Father’s Day

When we were young, my sisters and I always made Daddy breakfast in bed on Father’s Day. At sunrise, we would slip out the back bedroom window - as if my parents didn’t know - and pick field strawberries for Daddy’s cereal and wild roses to line his breakfast tray....