Patterns

Early Saturday morning, I’d read the news, finished my coffee, fed the dogs then, ready to start the day, checked the weather outside. “I think it’s snowing on the mountain,” I said to Keith. He looked up from his desk in the loft and gazed out the window facing the...

Martha

For thirteen years, starting in the mid-80s, I drove a tan-brown four-door, standard transmission 1983 Nissan Maxima named Martha. She had leather seats, an automatic sunroof and state-of-the-art voice prompts. “Key is in the ignition,” she’d say. “Thank you, Martha,”...

Communication

“Hey, Mom. I’m on my way to yoga,” my daughter Jessica said when we skyped last week. It was 6:45 Monday morning in Hong Kong and the same time on Sunday evening in Virginia, daylight savings time. “How’s the snow there? It’s pretty nice here, not too humid...

Shadows

“When my daughter was a teenager and going through a particularly difficult time, I asked her to take a walk one evening,” my Uncle George told me during our visit last summer. “I said to her, ‘Do you know what I don’t like in you? [Pause] It’s what I see in myself.’”...

Threes

“Trouble always comes in threes,” Mother warned us when we were growing up. In the past couple of weeks, Keith and I have had our three. First, the mailbox post snapped. We think it had a little help. Then the washing machine refused to drain or do anything: lights...

Quilting

Snow fell on Vanaprastha yesterday, covering the greenhouse windows in the dining room. Across the region, schools closed and many activities cancelled including last night’s writing group in Charlottesville and this morning’s Bible Study in Nellysford. Weather...