Harvesting

This year I harvested my first ever eggplants from my garden. It’s been many years since I had a garden, and I’d never grown eggplants before. Truth be told, my garden got minimum care in the warmest month because I was traveling a lot, so what I really did was see that little eggplant plant…

Messiness and Ambiguity

Maybe, like me, you prefer a clean and orderly house or workspace.  Maybe, especially when you have something important or unpleasant to do, you will clean your closet instead, sort your spice rack, match all your socks. There is probably somebody, somewhere who’s researched the relationship between cleanliness and genius or brilliance and clutter, deeper…

Martha’s Vineyard

It wasn’t the possible president sighting or the teensy plane ride over from Boston. It wasn’t the lackadaisical way they loaded our luggage and us after security. It wasn’t the lack of streetlights or the blissful absence of McDonalds or Hiltons. It wasn’t the rough and rocky beach with the moderate houses and beach bungalows…

Happy Song or Sad Song?

Recently on my trip to Ireland, I enjoyed live Irish music almost every night. It was heaven .  .  . I love the fiddle and mandolin, and I learned to love the harp and uillean pipes as I got to watch excellent musicians in pub sessions share their talents. One night in Kenmare, County Kerry,…

Speak

Remember that reoccurring dream since eighth grade? The one where either all your teeth fall out or you need to scream and you cannot? No matter how wide you open your mouth, how much air your lungs can hold. Nothing. Somehow you know you have something to say that’s important, critical. Maybe it might save…

Chops

This morning I checked FaceBook. It’s not a great morning habit and eats up time looking at obscure people’s updates. (How did they even get on my newsfeed?) I was, however, looking at an article by a colleague, Dorie Clark, about travel tips, as if I could ever make the ritual any easier, and somehow…

Reentry

I travel a lot, in comparison to most people. For much of this time, I’ve not been great about what happens before or after my trips. I’ll book appointments and calls right up until my departure, regardless of the length of my “to do” list in order to leave. And often, I’ll have people and…

Snow

Today I dreamed of skiing. Each time I closed my eyes, the bright white of the snow rose up from the crusted hill, glittering and hard. My skis scraped, then slid and scraped, with each careful turn down the mountain. After all those years, my body knew how to bend and flex, how to let…

Honoring Your Inheritance

As I write this, I’m visiting the wild, west coast of Ireland, a green seaside village of Ballyvaughan. In the past week, I’ve been immersed in Irish culture—hilly walks through The Burren to ancient stone dwellings, rousing sessions of traditional music in intimate pubs, sacred song and ritual in a fourteenth century church. I’m not…