For our belated holiday lunch our writing group leader asked us to provide each other with the "GIFT OF WORDS!!! - give everyone a gift of a short essay less than 1000 words that reads to the theme of New - as in Newness, New Year, new promises, memories of new years past, debauchery of new years past, hopes for the new year, new cars, new loves, anything that evokes the freshness & hope of something new!" Here's mine. About how my hope was renewed even in the face of deep sorrow. 2013 was a year with too much traveling, too many surgeries for my husband, and the deaths of two long-time cherished friends. Because those deaths happened in December one funeral was on New Year's Eve day, and Shiva took place in the first few days of the New Year I haven't had much enthusiasm for writing about newness and the freshness and hope of something new. However, while thinking about writing this piece I've realized how much children babies all the way up to adult children have put … [Read more...]
2013 reflections
I like to reflect a bit at the beginning of a new year, so here goes. 2013 for me and my family was a mixed bag. My husband Bob and I traveled a lot I think more than any other year in our lives together (to Denver three times to visit family; to London, Kenya, Tanzania, Dubai and Paris with dear friends; to Oakland to spend a weekend with another friend, and this month to Savannah, Charleston, Miami Beach on our own, and then on a Caribbean cruise again with our family all sixteen of us). We also hosted several rounds of visitors cousins and friends who stayed in the guest room of our home. Bob had two surgeries in 2013 a complete hip replacement in early January (that made the bells and whistles go off every time he went through an airline security check) and carpel tunnel in late November. And even though the timing was very soon before we left on our Africa plus trip, I drove up to Big Sur California on my own to take a poetry workshop at the Esalen Institute. … [Read more...]
