Category: WomenSpaces

As someone who takes a walk almost every day, I’m no stranger to its fitness benefits and other positive attributes. I love this quote about walking by the writer, Kenneth Grahame, 1959-1932, who’s perhaps best known for his classic children’s book, The Wind in the Willows. Clearly, Grahame relished being outside in the elements and appreciated the importance of his daily constitutional. Thought I’d share his words here to remind us all to get up from our desks, take a breather and put the day into wider perspective.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Anne started Womenspaces, a blog about home, family and personal relationships. We continue that tradition here, profiling pieces written by women who have come together through Richardson Media Group.
Up here along the New Hampshire border, winter often forces us to endure bone-chillingly low temperatures. The past week or so has been a particularly cold stretch with thermometers struggling to rise above zero degrees much of the time.

This August my husband and I stepped away from our busy work routines to spend several days on Cape Cod. Our mini-vacation was hastily planned, but delivered a refreshing respite from the usual schedule back home.

I was thinking back to when you and your brother were little, and your father and I would read to you in the evenings before bedtime. It was a cherished time of the day for all of us, when work was done, school complete, and we could be together. The books we read to you ran the gamut from classics like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach. Eventually, we included those funny Captain Underpants series and early volumes of Harry Potter and other fantasies. We chose the titles, not to teach you life lessons, per se, but to have you appreciate how humanity could be described through multiple viewpoints. Certainly Willy Wonka looked at the world very differently than Professor Snape did, and we hoped by using more than one literary lens we’d demonstrate to you the importance of considering multiple perspectives.

Many of us can recall exactly where we stood, what we were doing and how we felt the moment we met Grief face to face for the first time. When death takes a young person, one who hadn’t been given the chance to experience a fuller life, our first encounter with Grief may be confusing and especially difficult. Losing a child, a sibling, a peer, a friend, a classmate at the outset of his or her life, on the cusp of a brilliant future is a tragic and inconceivable thing.

So far, my life’s journey has been more curvy than straight. I’ve had my share of detours and dead ends over the years. I’m grateful for the tally of professional and personal milestones I’ve earned, and excited to be immersed in so many interesting endeavors right now. Yet, despite the optimism I’ve managed to collect, I’m never far from my ubiquitous cache of memories. Every once in a while, I’ll look deep into the bag at one of my previous touch points, hoping to remind myself of how much I’ve accomplished, or to appreciate the people in my life more.

I’ve been going through a hectic stretch recently with my new business, my son’s college search, both kids’ sports schedules, not to mention, the necessary day-to-day maintenance that fills my life. Some would say I’ve been taking a risk by focusing so heavily on external pressures instead of tending to my own internal fires. Sure, long-term it wouldn’t be a good idea, but I can’t imagine changing my course right now. I’m acutely aware of how fleeting this time is, the year before my oldest leaves for college, and I don’t want to miss a minute. It’s as if all the years of parenting have led me to this key moment: a launching off point for him, and a letting go point for me.

My husband is a seafood purveyor, or fishmonger, to use the archaic term. Selling fish is a tough business. Over the past twenty-five years, his wholesale operation in Boston’s seafood district has seen every potential disaster scenario there is. The recent publication of new research that confirms warming ocean temperatures as the likely cause of the reduction of regional cod stocks brings devastating news for our coastal marine habitats and more adversity for the New England fishing industry.

I have been forced to adopt an unwelcome familiarity with cancer.

As I write this, I am thinking of friends and family members who have battled or are currently in treatment for a seemingly impossible list of cancers: breast, ovarian, uterine, lung, bone, throat, blood, lymph system, liver, prostate, thyroid, skin and brain, to name just a few. To make matters worse, two of my close friends recently introduced me to the sarcoma family of cancers, adding one more ugly profile to this enemy invader. Not to mention the metastatic diseases that can result from these cancers of origin.

This piece originally appeared on Cognoscenti, WBUR’s ideas and opinion page, September 28, 2015.

In the winter of my third year as a fifth grade teacher, I faced the wrenching task of readying one of my young students for his immediate transfer to foster care.