Tagged: offspring

30
Jul
2022

STUCK ON STUFF LEFT BEHIND

I’m reading a good, if slightly disjointed, book by an author that I like, and every page contains word nuggets of beauty, obiter snippets, that I want to copy and write out, and share, and savor. This one struck me particularly: Maybe I shouldn’t be so attached to objects either. But everyone keeps dying, leaving stuff behind, objects I can’t usually get rid of. And I enjoy the company of the dead. They are so quiet. They know things I don’t know. The dead leave clues, and life is a puzzle of trying to read and understand these mysterious hints...

28
Dec
2021

EASE ON DOWN THE ROAD

One of my goals for 2021 was to walk a 5K every month in addition to the nearly daily walking I was already doing. My usual routes are either a double-helix around the neighborhood (approx. 1 kilometer), or a 1.5K zigzagging up the neighborhood and then over and around and down below the school, or a 2.5K which goes around the school, over into the village and all the way down the goats and back. It’s harder to keep up the commitment in the winter when the roads are icy, and they stay icy in our neighborhood for a really...

31
Oct
2021

PUMPKIN TO TALK ABOUT

There’s no knowing when you will do something for the last time. I suppose this is why we cling so to tradition. It’s a continuation in an uncertain world. All those years of holiday celebrations, dressing up for Halloween, coloring eggs for Easter, cooking turkeys for Thanksgiving, filling stockings for Christmas; they’re all ways to hold on to what we have, and what we want to remember and most of all what we want to pay forward into our lives. Yesterday, I went and bought Halloween candy and filled our biggest bowl in anticipation of trick-or-treaters tonight. Last year, trick-or-treating...

02
Dec
2020

MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO, MONKEY PROUD

Karin made dinner for us tonight: potato soup with carrots, leek and chicken dogs (cut-up). It’s a soup that she and her classmates made once, on an expedition to Skrylle, which is a nature reserve not too far from the school. She was about 14 at the time, and they made the soup over an open fire and she clearly remembers me asking her, when she got home, if she’d been smoking, because she smelled like smoke, and being upset with me for EVEN ASKING, GOD MOM. It was yummy, and Anders made garlic toast in the oven to go...

26
Jul
2020

NEWS FROM THE INSIDE OF MY HOUSE

Where do people go when they stop blogging? How can they stand not knowing what’s going on in the lives of the friends they’ve made online? How can they stand not knowing how the story continues? Even though I can go weeks without posting, I can’t imagine stopping forever. Or, well, I can, but I don’t want to. I like having this record of my life, my thoughts, my obiter dictum. I still think about blog friends, online friends, who left the blog world years ago. Just dropped off, stopped writing, as if no one cared that they were gone....

26
Jan
2020

FILLING IN THE NEGATIVE SPACE WITH POSITIVELY EVERYTHING*

I was waiting for a friend of mine at the mall on Friday evening, sitting on a bench outside of the store we were going to the grand opening of. I had my phone out and was checking email or Facebook or something and I glanced up to see if I could see her coming yet. But coming toward me was Karin. My daughter. And I thought, “What is Karin doing here??” Only a split second later I realized it WASN’T her at all. It was a girl her age, dressed EXACTLY like Karin dresses, with the same shape face...

02
Dec
2019

CREEPING UP

This weekend was filled with family thoughts in many different ways. Because it was the weekend after Thanksgiving, which we can’t celebrate on Thursday here in Sweden, it was also filled with the friends who have become family over the years. I went to the annual AWC wreathmaking workshop on Thursday evening, and we figured it out it was the 20-year anniversary. Not a huge turnout this year, but it was fun regardless, and I was quite happy with my wreath. I don’t understand why no one else takes advantage of the gold spray paint that Rosa always has on...

25
Aug
2019

TRIALS OF A BIBLIOPHILE

Megsie tagged me a book meme on Facebook, which is kinda the only meme that I can’t resist. It’s posting 7 books you love for seven days. When you read as much as I do, it’s REALLY hard to only pick 7 books. Do you pick your FAVORITES? (Impossible to stick to 7, in that case). Do you stick to one genre? Do you play to your audience? Do you choose only newer books or only older ones? What if you like really quirky books or complicated books or Harlequin romances or you feel children’s literature is underrated and not...

28
Dec
2018

EK FAMILY CHRISTMAS LETTER 2018

The beginning of 2018 was pretty calm and we hosted a New Year’s Eve dinner with friends here in Flyinge. Liz was recovering from gall bladder removal surgery, so she was taking it pretty easy. Anders went skiing again with colleagues, now an annual tradition. Martin returned to college in Detroit for the second half of his freahman year, even though his flight was cancelled and rerouted, and he ended up getting to spend a couple of nights with Liz’s sister in Connecticut. Karin and Liz participated in a gospel fest choir festival together, Karin’s first big choir event. In...

17
Nov
2018

STUFFED

I think a lot about dying these days. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I’m over halfway to a hundred? Maybe because I wonder what my family would do without me? Maybe because I see signs of decay in so many places. It’s in the news. It’s in the illnesses and diseases and diagnoses that drop like bombs around you. It’s a worm in the brain that whispers what if. What if? What would I do if I lived forever anyway? Even if inevitable, it’s a squirmy uncomfortable contemplation. All the accumulated flotsam of my life, both soothing and cluttering...

April 2024
S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930  

Archives