Category Archives: aortopexy

The Summer of Still-No-Book

summer-of-no-book

I set a goal in January: by June, I would have a solid crummy-first-draft of my book done. I even went to a workshop on how to create a daily writing practice; notes in my backpack, pressed daily up against my laptop, give me a roadmap and a way out of every excuse. I have the tools. I have the story.

It is August, and I do not have the solid crummy-first-draft.

I have forty-one crummy-first draft chapters, all leading up to a moment in the plot of my story when the drama comes to a full boil and holds there for six months. No matter how many times I sit down at my computer to write past it, I find myself doing other writing, working, checking Facebook, or editing previous chapters. Sometimes, I sit instead with the book proposal and churn through another chunk. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

Ten Gifts I Didn’t Deserve

grateful-sun-flowers

In the years I’ve spent as a parent, I’ve been humbled hundreds of times. Sometimes one of my daughters has a proclivity the other lacks. Other times, the health challenges of one make me see the relative good health of the other as anything but a given. Most often, though, I am humbled by the ways I see the challenges of other children and families. The things I took for granted always, always, reveal themselves to be as symptoms of my own ignorance. I could make the list below almost endless, pages and pages of gifts that no one is guaranteed but that I — somehow, luckily — was given. I will never take them for granted again. Never. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

I Was Always There

i-hate-this-picture

I hate this picture.

I hate that my daughter — normally so sunny, so funny and vital and affectionate and bright — asked me to take this photo. She asked me because she wanted to keep a record of her time staying in the cardiac intensive care unit at the children’s hospital, where she was trapped after surgery to move her aorta from where it was crushing her esophagus. She asked me to take this picture — this haunting, heartbreaking picture — because I’d suggested that she keep a journal of each day, mostly so she could see herself getting better each day. I hadn’t anticipated that she’d be awake for the photos the first day. Somehow, though, she pried her eyes apart and did her best to smile, right there, as the sun was beginning to set on day one. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

Daughter, Whole

bat-mitzvah

Several weeks ago, my triumphant, thriving, sensitive and sweet daughter Sammi read from the Torah for the first time.

In the Jewish ceremony known colloquially as a “Bat Mitzvah,” my daughter consciously took her place in her community by chanting three verses of a chapter from Leviticus. Like all children who become a Bat or Bar Mitzvah (literally, a daughter or son of the covenant), she studied for months to learn the melody and the Hebrew words she’d be chanting and all the prayers she’d need to know to share leadership of the service and analyze the chapter of Torah in English. She has a lovely, clear voice, and she spent weeks with headphones on listening to the sound of her tutor’s voice chanting her verses, and singing along. I’d heard her practicing, but nothing really prepared me for the feeling I would have on the day she became a Bat Mitzvah, as I stood next to her at the podium as she chanted in front of the congregation of our synagogue and all of the friends and family who gathered to bear witness. It was not what I expected. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

What You Brought Home

swallow-my-sunshine-brought-home

Dear Sammi Sunshine,

On the day that we brought you home from the hospital, we were nearly out of the parking garage when I remembered the milk — my milk, your milk, stored in the infant intensive care unit freezer. I’d been waking up every three hours for over a week to pump it and bring it in a little cooler to you each morning. I sprung out of the car, wincing from the cesarean section scar still healing on my abdomen, and went back into the hospital for it. It was the first thing you brought into our home — you, your tiny perfect self, and twenty-six ounces of expressed breast milk. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather